This post marks my first attempt at shortening my blog posts and getting right to the point. Hopefully I didn't over or under-do it. But I digress.
I found this post today on Big Think:
Brief though it is, the article is very thorough. The author effectively conveys two things in the three-paragraph article: we are genetically inclined to side with our family and friends, or those who will help us out; this is also common in the rest of the animal kingdom. The connection to the chimpanzees made the author's point clear right off the bat to me, as I've watched my fair share of nature documentaries, and can corroborate the claims that chimps have a very biased way of choosing their allies and making new friends. The author's last paragraph, however, could use a change in wording. ("But we’re still stuck in that biology. I think all of us recognize that we will behave this way if we’re not forced to, for example, hire somebody with talent rather than our cousin or our brother-in-law.") At first glance, if you aren't reading it carefully, the second sentence seems to contradict the first. The word choice is confusing; the author could do with switching "if we're not forced to" to "unless we're forced to," for the simple purpose of clarifying it for the reader. This article, on the whole, makes a great deal of sense when applied to political parties. Middle/upper class conservatives certainly get a bigger bang for their buck when Republicans hold the Oval Office, whereas Democratic presidents tend to benefit the poorer portion of the population. This doesn't explain the motives for our middle-class liberals, however; there are quite obviously more factors that truly determine an individual's political party than solely our genes.
Grammar lesson - semi colons.
ReplyDelete"The word choice is confusing; the author could do with switching"
This is almost a correct usage but it is not. A semicolon combines to phrases that are equal is the easiest way to think of it. What you did is attach one little phrase to one big sentence. If you had written:
The word choice is confusing; the point is muddled.
That balances - see?
Now, what you wrote could e written as two sentences:
The word choice is confusing. The author could do with switching "if we're not forced to" to "unless we're forced to," for the simple purpose of clarifying it for the reader.
Now, I see what you want here - your intent is to explain why the word choice is confusing and it "feels" like one idea. I agree. I would do this with a dash, as I did in the preceding sentence. You could also probably get away with a full colon:
The word choice is confusing: the author could do with switching "if we're not forced to" to "unless we're forced to," for the simple purpose of clarifying it for the reader.
It's much more authoritative with a full colon, isn't it?
See also this: http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Semicolons.html
How does it feel to write more tightly?