Without recasting, do the following plurals of words as words look correctly punctuated? Please note that the word as word/phrase as phrase is italicized throughout, with the exception of the -s and -es endings. (See below.) There were too many hases, ises, wases, thank-yous, maybes, and how do you dos? in that last essay. Does the example sentence above look correctly punctuated? Thank you.
I so desperately want to recast. ("There were too many instances of has, is....") I'm not clear on why you're italicizing. It makes me want to see these as foreign words, but they're not. I'm just generally confused.
It looks bad on paper, but I can imagine a teaching assistant returning a paper to a student and saying that sentence.
Why would you conflate (substantially) third person singular nouns with a couple of forms of greeting and an adverb?
If all you are interested in is the sentence punctuation, then replace the nouns with other nouns and see if it looks right. There were too many nouns, verbs, articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and how do you dos? in that last essay. As regards punctuation, it's fine, though I doubt I would include the question mark in that last phrase, but your initial caveat concerning not recasting illuminates that even you see that there are other issues at play in this sentence that come prior in the order condescendi.
VERNACULAR TRANSLATION 'I got a nice fat hase, she wases on the wandering, no doubt. But that's thing 'bout ises, got a mind of their own.'
I think this is a better solution: There were too many 'has's, 'is's, 'was's, 'thank-you's, 'maybe's, 'whereas's, and 'how do you do?'s in that last essay. Agree?
no we don't generally apostrophe plurals so that looks even more wrong. Personally I'd reframe as There were too many instances of "has, was, is, thank you, maybe, and how do you do, in this paper"
Yeah you're right they are - the second one should have been after "how do you do", not after "in this paper"
I think that the following would be correct: There were too many instances of "has", "is", "was", "thank you", "maybe", and "how do you do?" in that last essay. I realize that's not responsive to the original question, because it is recast, but we seem to have gone on to a slightly different question. Edited to add: Except, I'm using what I think is referred to as "logical quotes" as opposed to what I think of as "typesetter's quotes". In American typesetter's quotes, would it be the following? There were too many instances of "has," "is," "was," "thank you," "maybe," and "how do you do?" in that last essay. No, that can't possibly be right, can it? It's just too horrible to bear. Are typesetter's quotes used with commas?
Thinking about it I'd be inclined to say there are too many instances of was, is, thank you, may be ... without any quotes as it doesn't really need them because you are giving examples of single words not quoting a line of text
Heh heh... There is no question mark in 'how do you do' [?]. I'm definitely nearly completely certain.
No, this is worse. The problem lies in the simple fact that the nouns you are mentioning do not have any sort of standard plural presentation because it's just not the kind of thing that get's pluralized, and worse, the majority of the nouns in question already end in an S forcing you to add an -es ending that pushes some of them to the brink of recognition. I get that you're trying to find the answer to presenting this particular syntactic structure in this particular way, but it seems like such a faff when you can use the obvious construction already proffered by more than one member and denote the plural status of these words prior to their mention by making them all a prepositional phrase modifying instances or occurrences. Why are you taking this treacherous route? Yes, I completely agree. The question mark should be omitted.
Is it ? I'd have said it was a question as it invites a reply like the less formal 'how you doing' How you doing? not so bad , and yourself ? can't complain Its not a real question (something my mother never realised which meant that when the milkman asked her "how are you doing to day love", she decided to tell him, in detail, about her hysterectomy) but it does invite a reply so i'd say it still needs a question mark
I know what you mean; I'm not arguing whether it's the kind of question that actually invites an answer or not. What I mean is that when the phrase is made reference within this particular sentence, it no longer serves its purpose as a question, but is being called out as a thing. Another example: Who, what, where, why, and when are all interrogatives. In the above sentence, those interrogatives are questions, but we're not deploying them in their actual function. We're talking about them as kinds of words; hence, we would not punctuate them as though they were true questions being asked.
