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Old Tue Nov 22, 2005, 10:58pm
Carl Childress Carl Childress is offline
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Location: Edinburg, TX
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Quote:
Originally posted by WhatWuzThatBlue
Quote:
Originally posted by Carl Childress
Quote:
Originally posted by WhatWuzThatBlue
Is "careful" a sentence in any language?

I felt you would appreciate the fact that you made a grammatical blunder, after all you have embraced the need to point out others' foibles.
Talk about ignorance. (Now that's a fragment.)

But "Careful" is an excellent imperative sentence. In such locutions, the subject is understood to be the person addressed:

"Careful!
"Watch out!"
"Sing!"
"Talk!"

There are other, one-word sentences that have an implied subject and verb:

"No!"
"Yes!"
"Maybe!"

Garth is not a friend of mine, as everyone knows. And he makes a few mistakes in his posts because of his eagerness and passion. But "Careful" is no mistake.

He's also teaching an honors Humanities class. Yesterday, they began work on 15th-century Italian art, architecture, music, painting, and sculpture.

What did you do yesterday?
Your examples were exclamations. His use of it was not. Imploring is not proclaiming vehemence, but I know that you knew that. I guess it was just another case of writing one thing but meaning another. Lah me!
Ph.D.: piled higher and deeper.

The last time I looked, a punctuation mark had nothing to do with the parse of a sentence.

The snitch is tied to a chair. Waddles up the fat enforcer. Slowly he leans down, down... close to the unfortunate's ear and softly whispers, the sibilants hissing in the still of the shadowy room: "Sing. Ssssing."
Do you suppose the guy in the chair is worrying about his tormentor's grammar?

"Sing." is a complete, imperative sentence, whether shouted or spoken softly. "Careful." belongs in the same category.

I was you, I'd stick to ignoring FED rules. That's something you seem to do well.

Oh, by the way: I've had three emails from readers who would like me to criticize for structure and mechanics one of your longer posts. So far, I have resisted temptation. But I am an inveterate sinner and backslider, so....
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