posted
Okay, people, you know the drill: fifty points to the first person who can take a garbled, mangled sentence and make it sensible and serviceable.
quote:Another question is to determine what changes were made independently on behalf of a unique institution and philosophy and tested curriculum, pedagogy and the best interests of the greater university and its own students, rather than on economic, organizational, special interests, political rationale and personal whims.
I can fix the non-parallelism and some of the wordiness by myself, but I still can't quite figure out what the blasted mess means. The author is talking about changes in the Communications Department and figuring out what brought about those changes. But I've read it so many times now that it doesn't even seem like English anymore.
[ October 24, 2003, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
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posted
I would think that merely replacing the first two commas with dashes would go a long way, but I am of course not an editor. And this only works if that sentence means what I think it means. Basically I think it is saying that they wish to determine which changes were made for altruistic reasons, rather than selfish or provincial reasons.
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posted
Dashes? No. It's a long, strung-together list, and I don't think the stuff between those two commas is meant to be digressive in any way.
I agree with your assessment of what it means, but he's using so many words (and so many odd phrasings) to say it that I feel like I'd be missing something if I cut it down that much. The one thing I'm really hung up on is the "independently." Independently of what?
But I think that simply writing it down and saying what I think it means has helped me sort it out a lot.
[ October 24, 2003, 07:13 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
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posted
Hmmm... well I thought it was, but as I said I am not an editor, or even an English major. As for the independently, independently of what, exactly? Can you give more context to this?
posted
Another question is to determine what changes were made independently -- on behalf of a unique institution and philosophy and tested curriculum; pedagogy and the best interests of the greater university and its own students -- rather than on economic/organizational/special interests, political rationale and personal whims.
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quote:Another task is to determine what changes were made independently--to conform to the institution's philosophy, an established curriculum, a proven pedagogy, or simply the best interests of the greater university and its own students--rather than being brought about in response to arbitrary pressures--by economic, organizational, or other special interests, to conform to some political rationale, or simply as a result of personal whims.
I'm afraid it's no less wordy, but at least it makes sense to me like this.
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posted
I guess my biggest problem with a lot of passages like this is deciding which words don't actually need to be there. Sure, I can reword it to make perfect sense, but it's a long, gangly sentence. This author loves using multiple subjects, verbs, and modifiers when they really aren't necessary.
Okay, I'm going to stop whining now and do my own work.
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