[Ads-l] Clark University students told they can't say 'you guys' because it might be sexist | Daily Mail Online

[Laurence Horn]

> On Sep 11, 2016, at 1:25 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Benjamin Barrett <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> it doesn’t seem particularly uncommon.
> 
> 
> Ain't that the sad truth?

One of the most frequent prompts for my red pen in reading dissertation chapters is the need to overrule the apparent rule:

Subjects that are relatively long, require a comma before their predicates.

Since the relative clauses in these cases tend to be restrictive ones, I'm not sure a comma is in order (as opposed to the paired commas around non-restrictive relatives:

Let all that poison, which lurks in the mud, hatch out.
Let all the poison that lurks in the mud hatch out.

Yes, I'm wearing my prescriptivist hat...

LH

> 
> Why not
> 
> "Let all the poison, that lurks in the mud, hatch out"?
> 
> Or even
> 
> "Let all the poison hatch out that lurks in the mud"?
> 
> Those are far clearer ways to separate to separate the relative clause out,
> so that the reader can connect the following verb to the subject.
> 
> Maybe it's just a simple case of different strokes for different folks
> combined with language change in progress.
> 
> Youneverknow.
> -- 
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
> 
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