Revising something presently. I've noticed I naturally omit the word 'that' before 'the'... (23 cases in 3500 words) e.g. The gold the man stole was worth nothing in this world. v's The gold that the man stole... etc. Just wanting confirmation that both are okay? And maybe the expression of a preference? As per, I've been over-staring at this piece and overthinking outcomes.
“the man stole” is a relative clause, so technically the conjunction “that” is needed. Consider a similar example with a different conjunction: “The man who stole the gold was arrested.” Clearly, omitting the conjunction causes an error: “The man stole the gold was arrested.” So technically, in your example “that” is required. However, in common usage I believe it is acceptable to omit “that” in this context. The meaning is perfectly clear without it, and it doesn’t jump out as erroneous.
That's one up for what I'm wanting to hear. The occurrences of 'that the' if implemented would be too many and jump out for being repetitious. I'm leaving some of them out and working in small time rewrites for a portion of the remainder. Thank you for having my man arrested.
I think this is a case where the grammatical rule would be cumbersome if applied consistently, so it’s better to write these constructions in a way which feels natural even if it’s not technically correct.
When in doubt about grammar, resort to logic. Does one form present the content and meaning more clearly than another? If so, the more precise one is probably the correct one. Does the proposed alternative raise opportunity for misunderstanding? If so, it's probably wrong. Try both forms with different content, e.g. "Visions the children saw were of sugarplums." Sounds dumb, but doesn't lead to gross misunderstanding. Therefore, probably acceptable. Short of [*gasp*] looking up the actual rule, this is the rule of thumb I apply.
I somewhat agree, in that accurately communicating meaning should be the only real consideration in language use. If the intended meaning is conveyed, then it doesn’t really matter what’s right or wrong. Some things though, like using “shop” as a transitive verb, should be punishable by death.
May it please your worship, I respectfully request commutation to a week's Workshop exile? I doubt you mean as in "The bagman shopped his associates." but something akin to "Shop amazon!" The first would be grammatically correct, as long as slang were allowed; the second would reveal, on even cursory logic-testing, that the meaning would be substantially altered by the use of different prepositions. As it stands, the sentence is ambiguous, and therefore wrong. Well, all right a month's exile. What I meant was not so much that you should sacrifice grammar rules for clarity, but that grammar rules were made for clarity: if you achieve clarity by another route, there is a good chance you've guessed the rule. Regarding the example sentence in the OP : "Gold was worth nothing in this world." would read [sic] better. But now I'm just smartassing... unless that's hyphenated?
No, that use of ‘shop’ as a transitive verb is fine. Yes, exactly. “Shop the sale”, “shop the deals” and “shop the departments” are similarly unpleasant and should also result in vapourisation by laser cannon. No. Death! Yeah I knew what you meant. I didn’t mean to imply that grammar should be circumvented if it makes the meaning clearer. I don’t even see how that would be possible. Most grammars communicate things in the clearest way, except perhaps when they are extended to their limit like in legal language which, while no doubt grammatically faultless, is incomprehensible to most rational human beings.
I'd go with that but also balance it with the probability of being misunderstood. Especially when attempting to come under with a word count for a short story/flash fic. If the ambiguity sits in the realm (or just to the right) of a technicality I'd likely serve it. Feed a pedant and have a reader get by with a loose grasp of the gist on assumption. Rules of thumb it is, sucked and seen.
you bugger, rhythm, I mean, reading it out to a crowd of thesps so it sounds wonderful, [yawn] rhyme... [I mean - my lady's stressing out loud 'bout her 'career' in the foreground]
For myself - I try to keep 'sense' as taut as humanly possible, even step [over] 'sense' if it makes a damn joke for one person [cappuccino], hence routine cull of just/that/I/indeed/however...and on. Missing original point of post. A. It's because you're speaking in Manchester accent, poss, or lisping Home Counties..?
Limelight would burn me. I think I'm the kind to coach someone to do that sort of thing on my behalf. And it doesn't go unappreciated. All wheat no chaff, modicum of abstract seasoning. I'm still toying with my writing style(s)—my real voice stretches sense so taut as to snap it. The criticisms still pain me.
We should examine this. Are you talking mom, & @BV mm fiction types, or poetry lecturers? Read aloud. [My own stuff gives some people a headache beyond 1500, unsure I'll ever really crack this issew.]
Colleagues, 'take a break' readers, John Smiths (no nonsense types). Seuss'd love me. Wait a minute...how did I get here? Rorschach test next?
I'll go read your blaag [Well...think we're both fools publishing into hyperspace...thinking to start a loss-making magazine comic if u like? Pitch it over Viz & under Private Eye, I mean there's such a void...invent the space..?]
Yeah, I've been on pause with publishing anything for the last 10 (now 11) months. Accumulating many a scribbled leaf and keyboard rattled word doc. Deadrat's rejection journal dissuades me from touting them anywhere. Minded to leave them (pages and hard drive bound with string) for the kids when they do the house clearance... after, well, you know.
In that case, you can probably find a more direct way to convey the same content; lose a few more superfluous words. Didn't the reader already know that the man stole the gold? "Gold has no value in this world" saves you four words. Bet if I saw the story, I could pare another twenty, just by simplifying sentences. I am sometimes taxed with that very task when editing; it rarely proves an insurmountable obstacle. Unhappily, the story may lose colour and texture. The negative aspect is that the story may lose colour and texture.
The stolen gold was an example sentence @Oxymaroon , plucked from the aether. I feel bad now for the choice. If the story did exist, it'd have real gold and fool's gold in it—me the fool obviously. One mo, I'll get a raw line from the actual piece... ...it was a revelation to Luke that the snow-capped mountains he’d seen on postcards were that way for the heights they extended themselves to. The above contains one of the remaining two 'that thes' and much syntactic pleonasm. The rest (21) have been cut or replaced from the story. Also, the aim with this was to avoid repetition rather than screw down the word count. Be interested to see what you do with it.
The one in bold is not optional. It could result in ambiguity if omitted. Probably not in this case, but it would still sound weird to say “it was a revaluation to Luke the snow-capped mountains...” This is a different usage to the relative clause example you posted previously. Take another example using the same structure as the above: “It was a revelation to Luke that the boy he’d seen in the photograph was his cousin.” Now, let’s remove the ‘that’: “It was a revelation to Luke the boy he’d seen in the photograph was his cousin.” This is clumsy and potentially ambiguous, as “Luke the boy” is a valid noun phrase. Alternatively, the reader might mentally punctuate it to “Luke, the boy he’d seen in the photograph,” which would render the subject of the sentence as “he” and “Luke” would become the boy in the photograph. ETA - I got confused myself here. “Luke the boy” would still be the subject. But this structure could render “Luke” and “he” as two different people. In this context, “that” separates the subject of the verb from the rest of the sentence, and introduces that the following clause refers anaphorically to the previous one, i.e. that it’s the thing that was a revelation. Lets do the same thing to the sentence you posted about Luke: “...it was a revelation to Luke the snow-capped mountains he’d seen on postcards were that way for the heights they extended themselves to.” There’s not really any ambiguity here, as it’s extremely unlikely that “Luke the snow-capped mountains” is the subject of the sentence. However, it’s precisely the unlikeliness which makes the sentence seem clumsy. The potential to collet the beginning of the next clause into a noun phrase which doesn’t make sense makes the sentence read wrong, even if you know what it really means. So inserting the “that” in this context feels right, as it serves to clearly delineate the end of one clause and the beginning of the next.
Some more thoughts on this. It would be valid to structure this sentence thusly: “That the snow-capped mountains he’d seen on postcards were that way for the heights they extended themselves to was a revelation to Luke.” We need to clean up that trailing preposition to make it clearer: “That the snow-capped mountains he’d seen on postcards were that way for the heights to which they extended themselves was a revelation to Luke.” So, leading with “that” reveals that it is, effectively, shorthand for “the fact that...”. This therefore reveals more clearly the true subject of the sentence: “[the fact] that”. Pare the sentence right back and you can see it even more clearly: “The snow-capped mountains he’d seen on postcards were that way for the heights they extended themselves to. That was a revelation to Luke.” So, if you omit “that” in this context, you are dropping the subject from the sentence. And I think that’s probably why it sounds weird. In the other example you gave: “The gold the man stole was worth nothing in this world.” the subject is “the gold”, which is still present even without the pronoun (“which” or “that”) separating the relative clause from the subject.
