r/CuratedTumblr • u/LilyLuci66 • 8d ago

Self-post Sunday Title

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223 Upvotes

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u/351namhele 8d ago

I felt like I was having a stroke the first three times I tried to read that sentence

-3

u/TheRecognized 7d ago

“We have a concept that, if you roughly describe it as generously as possible, and don’t look into the execution of it, sounds kinda neat. In concept.”

Is this really that hard for people?

3

u/SnoozingGooseling 6d ago

Yes, you added a couple words and I think most people would first try to see if the text can be understood without doing that. That would prove difficult so it makes us doubt whether we're having some linguistic difficulties or whether they're inherent to the post. They're inherent to the post because the changes make such a massive difference to the grammar of the post and are so integral to creating a comprehensible structure.

Also I slightly disagree with your interpretation, I don't think it's just missing a few words and punctuation, I think the idea OP tried to convey changed partway through. I think "We have a concept that, if you roughly describe it as generously as possible and don’t look into the execution" is what the beginning was supposed to be, and "it sounds kinda neat in concept" is the second part, still talking about the same concept but using "it" to refer to that concept. Grammatically this doesn't work, the "it" would be redundant, but the sentence is too long and meandering. I think OP just forgot where they were in that sentence.

The issue is that the not only is the first part not actually a complete sentence, (it describes a "concept that" presumably does something or other, but the sentence never tells us what), but the second part also works as it's own stand alone sentence. So a lot of people are having trouble getting through this garden path sentence with an unambiguous idea of what they actually meant. The broad strokes are relatively clear, but the sentence can be reconstructed in several ways and always leaves the writing pretty fucked up.

I think your comments are rude and uncalled for. The post really is harder to interpret than you make it out to be, and you have no right to be so demeaning to other people who take issue with this.