syntactic analysis - The fine line between stilted and sloppy

I received a comment to one of my questions that I would like to elaborate on.

Because the inversion of word order in the original makes it sound a little stilted

The original question yielded two possible ways of expressing the same thing and Robusto regarded the former one as the more stilted.

Neither I am, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be

I am not, have never been, and never will be

I understand that point of view, but as I am trying to improve my understanding of English literature as a non-native speaker, I would like to know how other people think about this issue.

I would have thought that the former statement is more literary whilst the latter would be used in a casual dialogue.

Is this true? How can I decide which one to choose, and when would a variant be considered inappropriate?

Answer

These two examples exhibit anacolouthon: "Neither I am,... " ought to be followed by "...nor he is, nor she is..." The result is broken English. These sentences might be workable in fiction, precisely to show that the speaker was very emotional and slightly incoherent.

*Neither I am, nor ever was I, nor I ever will be [...]

*Neither I am, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be [...]

The next two answers are acceptable, but very formal, and slightly archaic. (This heaviness undermines the asseveration, and doubt creeps in: "Methinks he doth protest too much...")

I neither am, nor ever was, nor ever will be ....
(@Karasinsky)

Neither am I, nor was I ever, nor will I ever be ...
(@ Robusto)

It would be stronger and more emphatic to choose one of these two suggestions, and be direct.

I am not, have never been, and never will be ...
(@Robusto)

I am not now, never was, and never will be...
(@ Little Eva )

(The examples have been taken from this and a previous post, and if the contributors agree I shall convert this to Community Wiki.)

Singular and plural possessive of "species"

I need to construct a sentence, in which I'm referring to a feature of each of the animals in a given species. I don't quite know what the possessive of species should be, both in singular and plural.

Example:
(Talking about a single species with fuzzy ears.)

The species' ears are notably fuzzy.

Is the above correct? What if I had to mention multiple species all having fuzzy ears?

sequence of tenses - Optional vs obligatory back shifting

Consider two sentences -
1) I didn't know that X is a Russian.
2) I didn't know that X was a Russian.

My question is, under the condition that X is still Russian, can sentence 1) be used ?

Thanks.

single word requests - To mention the topic a book deals with, is it correct to say that 'a book talks about something'?

To mention the topic of a book, I can say that such and such a book is about something or that it tells about something.

Can I say that it talks about something?

Ngram-viewer-ing the book is about, the book tells about, and the book talks about indicates that using tell and talk are far less common than be in this context.

ngram viewer: the book is about, tells about, talks about

Talk sounds weird to me because you do not talk to/with a book: language, information only flow one way, from the book to you; reading a book is not having a conversation with it!

Answer

You're right to say that books don't normally talk, electronic children's books aside. The phrase the book talks about is a metonymic reference to the author of the book. That is, the book is in a sense the author's monologue and therefore the 'voice' of the author.

So the phrase the book talks about X means the author talks (or writes) about that subject in the book.

Talk sounds weird to me because you do not talk with a book, language, information only flow one way, from the book to you; reading a book is not having a conversation with it!

The phrase talks about is different from talks with. The former refers to a one-way flow of information as you describe, while the latter implies a two-way flow. So there is no inconsistency between saying the books talks about some subject and saying that you're not carrying out a two-way conversation with it.

grammaticality - How should an imperative sentence with multiple verb phrases and differing prepositions be worded?

The following are two version of a tagline.

Ask questions and share your unique knowledge about trains with the hobbyist community.

and

Ask questions about and share your unique knowledge on trains with the hobbyist community.

I would never say "Ask questions with..." so are these grammatically incorrect or just awkward? Is there a better way to word this without breaking it into two sentences?

The goal of the author was to have "hobbyist community" apply to both verb phrases. The desired meaning is as follows.

Ask the hobbyist community questions about trains and share your unique knowledge of trains with the hobbyist community.

However, that's a little long and redundant for a tagline. The only smooth wording I have come up with is the following.

Ask questions about trains and share your unique knowledge with the hobbyist community.

However, that changes the intended meaning somewhat.

Answer

The noun phrase the hobbyist community applies to both things: asking questions and sharing knowledge.

But the problem is that you ask questions of the community and you share your knowledge with the community. There's also the problem that you more naturally ask questions about trains and share your knowledge of trains.

Because each of these things result in a different formation, it's very awkward to have a single sentence where both parts make use of a common set of prepositions.

This can only really be avoided by not relying on a common set of prepositions. In doing this, the noun phrase also needs to be brought to the start of the sentence:

The hobbyist community where you ask questions about and share unique knowledge of trains.

But even though this is better (it now makes sense), and it retains all of the information in the original sentence, it's still a little lengthy and difficult to parse.

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Since sharing can imply both questions and answers, it could be combined into just that single thing, making the assumption that knowledge sharing means asking and answering questions.

As before, the noun phrase could be at the start of the sentence:

The hobbyist community where unique knowledge of trains is shared.

Another possibility keeps the emphasis on the person with the noun phrase at the end:

Share your unique knowledge of trains with the hobbyist community.

But both of those versions essentially dismiss the original first part of the sentence.

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Alternatively, asking questions could be retained if sharing is replaced with answering questions and knowledge is dropped (in order to keep it simple). Also as before, the noun phrase is moved to the start of the sentence:

The unique hobbyist community where you ask and answer questions about trains.

Or, depending on the emphasis:

The hobbyist community where you ask and answer unique questions about trains.

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Of course, there are several variations of all of these examples.

grammar - In "Enter John", is John in the nominative or accusative case?

This question made me think about the structure of the sentence.

I'm familiar with the expression 'Enter Michael'/'Exit John' to represent Michael's or John's entry or exit, respectively, to a dramatic stage, and its metaphorical use.

Is this a real sentence, or a sentence fragment? Either way, should John be treated as the subject of the sentence, and put in the nominative case? I realise that this makes little practical difference as English words are not typically declined based on case, and "exit him" or "Enter I" sounds wrong either way. However I am curious.

Initially I had thought that "exit" might be the subjunctive, and that the phrase was equivalent to "Let John exit". But the plural of "exit" in stage directions is "exeunt", and both "exit" and "exeunt" are present indicative in Latin.

Answer

My interpretation is that we are looking at a nominative. Here is why.
The key to the noun case lies I believe in the analysis of the verb inflection.

One first need to acknowledge that scene directions in play-texts used to take various forms¹.

1. All Latin:
   
   
   
   • Present indicative mood: intrat/intrant and exit/exeunt. In which case the characters are in nominative case.
   
   
   • Present subjective mood: exeat/exeant (nominative as well)
   
   
   For instance in exeunt omnes as you note, exeunt is the 3rd person plural of the present indicative of the verb exeo.
   In theory, omnes is possibly the masculine plural nominative, vocative or accusative of omnis.
   Since exeunt is not an imperative, we can rule out vocative.
   Since exeunt is a plural we can rule out accusative - if it were an accusative we would have exit omnes, not exeunt omnes, some kind of "there exit all".


2. Mixed English/Latin:
   
   
   • Present indicative mood: Entreth[enters]/enter (singular plural) and exit/exeunt. For instance "Enters the King". The King is a nominative case (note that the verb is inflected as a 3rd person singular).
   
   
   • If we read Enter John, one could interpret enter as an imperative in which case John is a vocative. but that doesn't square up with exit (a Latin indicative - the imperative would be exi or exito) and seems awkward in the case of "Enter the King".
     There is another explanation though. I would venture that since exit is both a Latin 3rd person singular and an English infinitive, the enter form is a symmetric infinitive. Said otherwise, the exit started as a Latin indicative and was retained because it looked like an English infinitive. This would explain the weird mix of English and Latin (enter is no Latin word of course). In this case, the noun is in the nominative case.
     
   
   
   
   

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Note 1
A Japanese professor of European literature named Mariko Ichikawa has actually devoted a (freely available) whole article to Shakespearean Entrances. Here is a short excerpt:

A survey of stage directions in early English renaissance plays shows that the use of the English direction 'Enter' (presented in the imperative mood and used for either one or more characters) along with the Latin direction 'Exit'/'Exeunt' (in the present indicative mood) was not completely established until the early or mid-1590s. Some of the earliest surviving play-texts basically employ the convention of massing the names of all the characters who appear in any given scene in one list at its opening, without the word 'enter' or its equivalent, in imitation of the printed form of Roman comedy current in the Renaissance. Some almost exclusively use the Latin directions: 'intrat'/'intrant' (in the present indicative mood) and either 'exeat'/'exeant' (in the present subjective mood) or 'exit'/'exeunt'. Others normally use vernacular verbs such as 'come in' and 'go out', and 'enter' and 'go out'. 'Entreth[enters]'/'enter' (singular plural) and 'exit'/'exeunt' are usually found[...]

punctuation - When should I use an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen?

I generally know how to use a hyphen, but when should I use an en-dash (–) instead of an em-dash, or when should I use a hyphen (-) instead of an em-dash (—)?

Answer

An em-dash is typically used as a stand-in for a comma or parenthesis to separate out phrases—or even just a word—in a sentence for various reasons (e.g. a parenthetical; an ersatz-ellipsis). Examples where an em-dash should be used:

• School is based on the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic.


• Against all odds, Pete—the unluckiest man alive—won the lottery.


• I sense something; a presence I've not felt since—

An en-dash is used to connect values in a range or that are related. A good rule is to use it when you're expressing a "to" relationship. Examples where an en-dash should be used:

• in years 1939–1945


• pages 31–32 may be relevant


• New York beat Los Angeles 98–95


• When American English would use an em-dash – following British and Canadian conventions.

A hyphen is used to join words in a compound construction, or separate syllables of a word, like during a line break, or (self-evidently) a hyphenated name.

• pro-American


• cruelty-free eggs


• em-dash


• it's pronounced hos-pi-tal-it-tee


• Olivia Newton-John

The minus sign is distinct from all three of the above.

• 4 − 2 = 2.

If you want to use the correct dash or hyphen in comments, just use the appropriate HTML entity: — for em-dash, – for en-dash, and − for the minus sign. The hyphen is, of course, directly on your keyboard.

Figure dash

The figure dash (‒) is so named because it is the same width as a digit, at least in fonts with digits of equal width. This is true of most fonts, not only monospaced fonts.

The figure dash is used within numbers (e.g. phone number 555‒0199), especially in columns for maintaining alignment. Its meaning is the same as a hyphen, as represented by the hyphen-minus glyph; by contrast, the en dash is more appropriately used to indicate a range of values; the minus sign also has a separate glyph.

The figure dash is often unavailable; in this case, one may use a hyphen-minus instead. In Unicode, the figure dash is U+2012 (decimal 8210). HTML authors must use the numeric forms ‒ or ‒ to type it unless the file is in Unicode; there is no equivalent character entity.