A couple of times recently I've had this warning message from Eudora:
The message you are sending is missing at least one of its images. It will be sent without the missing image(s).
The message pulled me up short the first time I saw it, and the second time as well, at which point I copied it before hitting OK.
I've looked at it again a couple of times since then, and I can't make up my mind whether it makes sense or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. It seems to depend on how I'm feeling at the time. I know what it means, but does it really say what it means?
Is missing the problem? If the sentence said, It will be sent without the images, it is clear, isn't it? We already know that the images are missing. When missing is used again, it is redundant, because the implies missing already. It is like saying the message will be sent with missing missing images.
Or ... is it?
Wait ... maybe it depends on whether you understand without to modify images or missing images.
Or, maybe ...
I am becoming very sleepy. Aren't you? Why are you still here?
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
BobCiz Carrie Cheryl Contamination
Daryl Sng Drinks After Work Doris Echidne of the Snakes Editter Elizabeth Faerunner Frooples and Froopert
Geoff Arnold Gordon Greg Heaneyland Hmmn Kay in Hawaii Keith Ecklund Kenju Kim Librarianguish Lippy Maria (in Kyoto) Megan Melanie (in Japan) Melinama Metastases Mike Mike Ball Ms Mac Miz UV Philobiblon PJ's Place Pkchukiss Professor B RadioactiveJam Rest Area 300M Restless Kiwi (Shona) Roy (at the Busy Bee Cafe)
Sector 7g StyleyGeek TinyHands Torrygirl Tracy Wiccachicky WriterMom
About Me
- Badaunt
- I'm from NZ, and now live in Japan, teaching English to reluctant university students. Email me: badaunt at gmail.com
Email me
badaunt@gmail.com
Interesting people
Language, science, education
Useful stuff
Fun stuff
Links for language teachers
I have noticed that I get a lot of hits from people searching "present simple" and "ESL," and assume that this is language teachers looking for ideas or lesson plans. The following links are good places to start.
ESL Lounge Here you will find lesson plans organised by level. A fantastically useful site for busy teachers, and easy to navigate.
British Council Here lesson plans are organized by topic. There are more teaching activities in the 'downloads' section.
The Internet TESL Journal
They have not updated this page for a while, but there is still a lot you might find useful.
Humanising Language Teaching
This is an online journal, good for ideas, inspiration, and especially good towards the end of semester when you're feeling not quite human.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Almost too much to wade through, but a very useful resource. Lots of links to other sources.
Karin's ESL PartyLand
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive. I have not tried any of these, but there are a lot of ideas here, and they look good. At the very least you will be inspired.
Good luck!
Site feed
Blog Archive
Picture Stories
- Bird story
- Bad hair day
- Duck Olympics
- Duck Olympics (cont)
- Evolution
- Intelligent design
- Miracle
- Sinking problem
- Dance
- The diving lesson
- The contest
- The game
- Q.E.D.
- Conversion
- Motherhood
- Manners
- Breakfast
- Unsuitable friends
- Disguises
- Different
- Summer
- A good day
- Barking
- Who farted?
- Side-effect
- Wipeout
6 comments:
Please don't get me wrong! I am not a stalker...
Not one that you know of anyway... *cue evil laughter*
I wonder how much thought went into the wording of that warning. Or - best case - it's a "generated" thing: some do-all error handler combines sentence fragments and presents a context-specific message.
Right, chance not.
Years ago I heard a radio announcer toss out this quip regarding an event: "That's one you won't want to fail to miss." I still get brain spasms trying to parse it.
Yes, it is redundant.
But is it possible to send a message wit a variety of images (perhaps in a variety of formats) and only have one image or one type of image 'fall off'?
If so, to say it is sent without the images would imply all of them, so it has to stipulate its referring to the originally missing ones, again.
Or something. I think. And no, I wasn't very sleepy, but now,...
Ah, but it could be said "will be sent with the image missing" and mean what it's supposed to mean, so does that make the "without" wrong?
Blimey! Eudora takes me back! It was the first email manager thingy we ever had when we first got dial up in 1997!
Post a Comment