What the fuck is this guys deal with grammar
> I don't understand grammar
He writers sentences like
It's not a surprise that Saturday Night Live [blah]...premiered next fall. On television.
That full stop between next fall and on television, why is it there? WHY NOT A COMMA FOR THE EFFECT HE WANTS OR JUST NOTHING. Have I deeply misunderstood grammar and sentence structure my whole life?
I saw it loads in IJ but just always thought "weird future grammar or some shit, cool"
I am aware of the basic grammar and spelling errors in my actual post. After having reviewed it...
In order to be le quirky postmodern genius you have to have quirky incorrect grammar!
Pynchon does This to Certain Nouns quite improperly.
McCarthy doesnt put apostrophes in his conjunctions and I wonder why he doesnt use question marks.
I'm not wholly against it and in many cases it's to the benefit of the novel, but my inner anal-sadistic 10th grade English teacher wants me to let them experience my pain and humiliation.
>>8207496
But this is taken from one of his essays! Surely one can't be such le quirky durk that one literally writes ungrammatical sentences outside of fiction. I'm wondering if it's just another "Don't start a sentence with a conjunction" type myth?
Dave knew the ins and outs of grammar extremely well. Whatever he's doing is completely on purpose.
>>8207529
That's my feeling, I suppose a good old-fashioned Google search might provide me with answers. Probably.
>>8207511
>postmodernists would never write obtusely on purpose in nonfiction
I'll have what you're smoking.
>But and so and but so
Literal excerpt.
>>8207559
I don't really care about the "and but so's" in his text but it was a little ridiculous when he put it in dialogue and pretended it's a normal thing to say.
>>8207561
I say it now...after having read it. But seriously can we talk about that full stop. It's interesting.
>>8207571
There is literally nothing wrong with the full stop. It's a simple clarification post sentence.
>>8207529
that may be true, doesn't make it any less obnoxious.
>>8207448
Oh, come on.
Fucking >>8207529 has it right. It's just stylism, and it imitates the flow of conversational English pretty well. It's slightly off-kilter, but natural, and extremely casual.
It's also a sort of meta irony. It's an unnecessarily specific clarification that reads peculiarly. It's odd and incongruous, and it's kind of funny.
>>8207575
Yeah I think I've just got a dodgy grasp on grammar, not many writers I've read do that though. Can you explain my misconception?
I though a sentence beginning "On television" must go on to finish like " tonight is the programme we all love", and without would be a fragment...
>>8207575
it's just a really condescending/annoying way to get his point across though. the rhetorical effect is exaggerated by the full stop, but in a "look how smart i am" way not in a "look how interesting this is" way
>>8207592
"On television" is a fragment, but literature isn't necessarily written with perfect BBC grammar.
>>8207588
Or it's just perfectly grammatical and we're idiots?
>>8207571
It's just used to put extra emphasis on the second part. It's not unusual or weird at all.
I feel like an em dash would be more appropriate
>>8207611
That, I would totally get.
This nuts... Rofl got him
>>8207614
Students are there to learn the rules. If they're bending or breaking them, it's just precociousness -- a wink at the professor. You learn when and where you can get away with it. But we're not talking about rote essays. Expression abides only by the rules you choose to obey. Mimicking the rhythm of speech in writing is so common, I'm surprised it rustled you. At least it's not a phonetically spelled gutter dialect.
>>8207656
But the rules of grammar are supposedly there to offer universal access, to describe syntax that endures in the same way that maths does. To rely in on consensus is to be lost...
Haha, that's the high horse argument I would make but I see your point, my conviction remains that there's more to this question that would be revealed by research. Unless any legit grammarians want to bust in to confirm the example as an ungrammatical fragment? No dilettantes please.
P.S you do not need to be an actual academic grammarian, just sure.
Proper grammar is a foundation for your fiction writing. Skillfully deviating from it is much more impressive than dogmatic adherence.
>>8207671
I guess I just don't understand what you mean by "ungrammatical."
"On television." is not a complete, independent sentence. There's no subject or verb. It's a prepositional phrase.
So in a sense, it is "ungrammatical" or "grammatically incorrect" to punctuate it and let it function as an independent sentence.
However, it's not unintelligible or ungrammatical to the point of gibberish. It's implied to be a continuation of the preceding sentence, and the two sentences work essentially as one grammatical unit, but DFW punctuates them as separate sentences for stylistic/rhetorical effect.
Writers often play with grammar conventions for stylistic effect. Huck Finn is written in a dialect that breaks many standard English conventions, but it's intelligible and in fact its play with American English is part of what makes it an important work of literature.
But, if someone with little intuitive/working knowledge of grammar and syntax tried to write intentionally ungrammatical sentences, like Twain does in Huck Finn, it would just sound like bad sentences, rather than sentences that reflect a character's intelligence or upbringing or social environment.
>And but so
Really makes you think...
>>8207952
Yeah that satisfies me. I'd half remembered something about indeterminate pronouns in sentences always denoting the most recent subject in the previous sentence but I couldn't find the thing on Google, compound that with, as someone else said, the fact that DFW was V into grammar and you get me, all confused about what is and isn't a grammatical sentence. I should probably just read more about grammar because I do find it interesting, presumably one shouldn't need to break the rules though? An - would of been fine. I don't really see how the full stop there does anything that would be impossible in conventional grammar?
>>8208068
have*
Amongst other errors, I really should read more on grammar.
>>8207952
But yeah it's that thing of being intelligible by context, but, presumably, to some kind of grammar nerd robot with who followed the rules to the letter, nonsense.
I want to write the kind of Lit that Microsoft word would enjoy.
>>8208068
I think you just disagree with his stylistic choice is all. I'm with you, I think it's dumb, but there's nothing like "wrong" with it.
>one shouldn't need to break the rules though?
not at all.
>>8208068
hmm I actually do though: see how the full stop...
Good council lads, I feel my query has been resolved to my satisfaction. And they say /lit is useless. Not so.
>>8207594
>in a "look how smart i am" way
it's just a goddamn fragment you dolt, this is so common, what is wrong with you, christ
>>8208068
>would of
fuck you
You gotta know the rules to break the rules; nerds.
Grammar doesn't exist. Language is naturally developed by the people who speak and write in it, then spineless bucktooth bespectacled bookworms decide to "codify" it, to impose their arbitrary laws on it, when really people will talk and write however the fuck they want to as long as it makes sense to other people, if not, certain syntactical forms simply get weeded out of the language naturally, no biggie.
One example of this totally arbitrary bullshit they teach you is "don't end a sentence with a preposition". This actually isn't grammatically incorrect and is merely an autistic stylistic suggestion that got taken for a rule and memetically repeated in highschool English classes for some reason.
>>8207982
I dont get this.
Is this a thing against conjunctions? Or is it against opening with them? Also, why is that "a rule"?
Starting a sentence with "And so," works to me with narrative recounting subsequent events.It's how i use it
>Set in Hyrule, 100 years after the protagonist Link starts his slumber, the story starts with his awakening as an amnesiac to a mysterious voice as he follows its direction and embarks on a quest to defeat the Calamity Ganon.
How can I fix this to make a bit more clear? Especially with the "his awakening as an amnesiac to a mysterious voice" part.
>>8207448
That is Jason Segel from How I met your mom, not Dave O
>>8207448
to emphasize how big of a deal that it is on television. he would have gotten the same effect using an em-dash; it's show-offy but not technically incorrect.
>>8209729
>Grammar doesn't exist.
you really want to defend this?
