I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but:
1) geometry rawks, because it bills itself as math, but is apparently quite
math-free--all the benefits, but no drawbacks;
2) connotations aside, there is no denotative difference between the
period/capital letter vs. the semicolon. They are grammatically equivalent.
If a person were, however, to place a COLON between those two clauses, the
implication of murder would be crystal-clear, as a colon implies an equal
sign + an arrow that can convey a sense of cause-and-effect;
3) if I were able to handle notational systems, I would have kicked ass in
algebra, chess, and symbolic logic. But symbols normally create a fresh
mind-block for me, and I find myself saying, a la Dorothy Parker, "what
fresh hell is THIS?" I am, in fact, the perfect complement to the
science/math geek chick character in *A Wrinkle in Time.*
--J
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:29 PM, barkofdelight <barkofdelight_at_yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>
> --- Rin wrote:
>
> > I write on the board, My husband used to beat me. He's dead now.
> > Then I change the period to a semicolon.
>
> You see, this is exactly the kind of thing that
> we're talking about. What you've done here is
> conveyed to the students a subtle yet important
> distinction in a way that they are likely to remember
> and almost certainly enjoyed. There was no need for
> drills or repetition here. In fact it could be
> argued that this *single* example would be far more
> effective than 1000 boring exercises on the topic.
>
> And how did you do this? You did this by of course
> having an understanding of the actual subject matter
> but more importantly, by *thinking about it* and caring
> about teaching it well. This was a puzzle that you had
> and it mattered to you to solve it.
>
> Regrettably, such caring and thoughtfulness is the exception,
> not the rule.
>
> Bark!
>
>
>
--
Joy M. McCann
Goddess of Ink and Paper
(But pixels obey me, too.)
Mistress of proofreading, fact-checking,
Line-editing, and copyediting
Copy Write Editorial Services
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Received on 2009-04-25 03:23:05