Friday, July 29, 2022

Fortune Quote #3655

A writer often embarks on a substantival `that'-clause only to find that
it is carrying him further than he reckoned, and to feel that the reader
and he will be lost in a chartless sea unless they can get back to port and
make a fresh start. His way of effecting this is to repeat his initial
`that'. This relieves his own feeling of being lost. Whether it helps the
inattentive reader is doubtful; but it certainly exasperates the attentive
reader, who from the moment he saw `that' has been on the watch for the
verb it tells him to expect, and realizes suddenly, when another `that'
appears, that his chart is incorrect. -- H. W. Fowler, "Modern
English Usage"

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