Let's try and get 1,000,000 replies to this post

Black Wizard said:
It's like selling your soul to the devil anyway.
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Some people take that very literally. Prior to the referendums in Norway (1972 and 1994) about whether we should join the EU or not, several religious groups argued that the EU was a tool for the Antichrist, and tried to fit different EU organs into various biblical prophecies. Pretty much the same way some US groups do with the United Nations. Actually quite fascinating to see how people keep trying to fit current events into religious prophecies.
 
Here's a question: Is there an English verb such as caricating, or is there only caricaturing?
 
That's what I was afraid of. I therefore chose to avoid the verb altogether, and wrote "it was seen as a caricature". It would sound better with a verb in German, but it sounds better with a noun in English.
 
I'm so tired. Is this good English:

Eventually, the harbouring of members of the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda, including its leader, Osama bin Laden, broke the Taliban's back, making them the primary target of Western reaction following the terrorist attacks of 11. September 2001.
 
Wästed The Great said:
So.... I took the oldest daughter to see the Eagles last night. I like them (mostly Joe Walsh). Was a good time, got home at 2am, was at work by 8am.... I am sleepy :) The daughter was happy, that was her first ever concert!
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Geez, your daughter, my dad. He saw the Eagles just last month, his first-ever concert. He's 71.
 
Yeah, it's an unnecessary comma. Most people who write English would put a comma there but they'd all be wrong.
 
mckindog said:
Geez, your daughter, my dad. He saw the Eagles just last month, his first-ever concert. He's 71.
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That's awesome!

I'm wishing I'd taken her to Maiden. I'll probably do that the next time they are around. The first concert I took my son to was Maiden, he was like 14, I think.
 
Perun said:
Really? It looks so wrong to me. But as I said, I'm really tired.
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By harbouring members of Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, the Taliban became the primary target of Western reaction to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. This eventually broke the Taliban's back.

Or,

Harboring Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members made the Taliban the primary target...
 
LooseCannon said:
No comma after leader. Other than that, it's fine, if long.
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LC is probably right here, though a case could be made for leaving in that comma in. From Oxford Dictionary website:

Using commas to mark off parts of a sentence
... Take a look at this example:
Cynthia’s daughter, Sarah, is a midwife.
The writer’s use of commas tells us that Cynthia has only one daughter. If you removed Sarah’s name from the sentence, there would still be no doubt as to who was the midwife:
Cynthia’s daughter is a midwife.
If you rewrite the original sentence without commas its meaning changes:
Cynthia’s daughter Sarah is a midwife.
The lack of commas tells us that the name ‘Sarah’ is crucial to the understanding of the sentence. It shows that Cynthia has more than one daughter, and so the name of the one who is a midwife needs to be specified for the meaning to be clear.
If you aren’t sure whether you’ve used a pair of commas correctly, try replacing them with brackets or removing the information enclosed by the commas altogether, and then see if the sentence is still understandable, or if it still conveys the meaning you intended.​

By the way, my suggested edit was simply to shorten and remove excess words. Your reader presumably knows what Al Qaeda is and who Osama bin Laden was, so you don't really need that verbiage.
 
Black Wizard said:
Read it again in the morning.
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Yeah. Now it looks even worse. :D

LooseCannon said:
Yeah, it's an unnecessary comma. Most people who write English would put a comma there but they'd all be wrong.
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Now isn't that something. What does it say about my language skills when I make the same common mistakes native speakers make. My major problem is however, that English and German commata are so radically different that I fuck them up in both languages.

Cornfed Hick said:
By the way, my suggested edit was simply to shorten and remove excess words. Your reader presumably knows what Al Qaeda is and who Osama bin Laden was, so you don't really need that verbiage.
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And you're absolutely right with your suggestions. My sentence was perhaps syntactically correct, but terrible to read. And I've got a big number of similar sentences in my document. Observe this all but unreadable monster:

Makhmalbaf's subsequent attempts at garnering further recognition for the film's subject matter, including an open letter to Iranian president Khatami, and the publication of an essay entitled The Buddha was not demolished in Afghanistan, it collapsed out of shame (Budda dar Afġānestān taḫrib našod, az šarm forou riḫt), were also unsuccessful. This was despite the fact that the title of the latter essay was inspired by the destruction of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan by the Taliban, an event that had received massive worldwide media attention; more, in fact, as Makhmalbaf noted, than the plight of the Afghan people.
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I'll finish writing the document though, and then start reviewing and editing it.
 
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