Timeline for What do "former" and "latter" refer to, here?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 4, 2016 at 4:11 | comment | added | Buttle Butkus | Your quoted text is a great example of bad writing, which makes the reader work hard to understand mundane ideas. I'm sorry you are being forced to read it. "Former" and "latter" are frequently paired in a sentence in order to refer to two things mentioned previously. They function as pronouns. In this case, the structure is so stilted that I had no idea what those two things were until I reread the passage. I believe "former" refers to "his limitations" and "latter" refers to "his gifts," in this case. It's even more confusing when he refers to the limitations as "great". | |
| May 4, 2016 at 0:36 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/727658037658456066 | ||
| May 4, 2016 at 0:30 | vote | accept | Ankur Patel | ||
| May 4, 2016 at 0:29 | vote | accept | Ankur Patel | ||
| May 4, 2016 at 0:30 | |||||
| May 3, 2016 at 21:07 | comment | added | Yorik | The OP should take heart: this was written circa 1878, which is why it seems quite tortured. It was written by "a key figure of 19th century literary realism" and, presumably, a "good writer" ( books.google.com/… ) | |
| May 3, 2016 at 20:53 | answer | added | wtfs | timeline score: 0 | |
| May 3, 2016 at 16:44 | comment | added | thumbtackthief | I think it's just a good lesson that being a native speaker of a language does not necessarily make one a good writer of that language. | |
| May 3, 2016 at 9:34 | answer | added | Chappo Hasn't Forgotten | timeline score: 14 | |
| May 3, 2016 at 9:26 | comment | added | Ankur Patel | @Ed I wish if I could and Well to get into great Graduate business school one need to criss-cross through such gloomy passages | |
| May 3, 2016 at 9:17 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | I'm a 60-year-plus well educated native speaker, and I'd not even read such high-flown prose unless I were forced to. If this is compulsory reading, show this comment to your supervisor. | |
| May 3, 2016 at 9:12 | comment | added | Ankur Patel | @Ed So what can normal level non-eng-natives can do about this? | |
| May 3, 2016 at 9:08 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | It's an unusually (and unnecessarily) contorted construction. | |
| May 3, 2016 at 9:05 | history | edited | Andrew Leach♦ | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited title
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| May 3, 2016 at 9:01 | answer | added | Kate Bunting | timeline score: 19 | |
| May 3, 2016 at 8:02 | review | First posts | |||
| May 3, 2016 at 10:09 | |||||
| May 3, 2016 at 8:00 | history | asked | Ankur Patel | CC BY-SA 3.0 |