ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

Yes, the point of the “by the way” trick is to see whether it works with “which”, not whether it works better with “which” or “that”. In this case, as you say, it doesn’t work with “which”, which tells you it should be “that” instead.

is "works with which" = "means what you meant"?

Yeah. Like, if I had a sentence that was “Elephants, which are the world’s largest land animals, are fun to ride on”, adding “by the way” after “which” would make the sentence more long-winded but it would pretty much mean the same, so “which” is right.

Whereas if it was “Elephants which have no tusks are unlikely to be poached” then adding “by the way” would change it completely.

That/which feels like one of those artificial distinctions that has some use in theory but I’m not sure how much confusion it really avoids, even if everyone were on board with the rule. I mean, there’s no equivalent for “who” and we seem to get by.

yes i think what's subliminally throwing me a bit here is that the threadname has a kind of "fuck around and find out" element to it = "post roughly this kind of picture until we can decide if inserting "by the way" changes the meaning, or (you know) not?"

dear grammar friends,

the commas in the second bullet point are wrong, right? like super wrong? (mark i know your answer already)

https://i.imgur.com/nWTlFfn.jpg

the first one is? but the 2nd ain't too badly

I agree Tracer; I would cut both commas. You could also consider deleting "that" (is that the mark answer?), but I'd probably reword it to something like "The administration believes that reassuring their European allies about energy supplies will make them more willing to place sanctions on Moscow."

(oh and you can cut the "that" in my rewording too)

first one is wrong yes, second one is unproblematic and actually somewhat helps clarity i feel

if you do x then y follows
if you do x, then y follows

^^^both ok

better still rewrite tho

Here's the thinking: European allies will likely be more willing to place sanctions on Moscow if they are confident about energy supplies

i think "the theory is that if" is just ugly writing in the first place and it's this ugliness that the first (bad) comma is attempting to cover up

also the shift from ("are reassured") to ("would be more willing") seems weong tho my late-night parsing is not quite up to why as regards the technics

it shd either be fully indicative = ("are reassured") to ("will be more willing")
or fully subjunctive = ("were reassured") to ("would be more willing")

i believe

haha i was wrong i did not know what you would say after all!

second one is a BAD headline -- inscrutable, poor construction

commas aside there is an easier way to say that:

Experts suggest European allies would be more willing to place sanctions if they are assured about...etc

you know how it is when people get wedded to a theory

Yeah I'd rewrite it to avoid that construction, not just tweak the number and placement of the commas

now that i’m looking at it again, i don’t like the comma in the actual headline either

same

the need to jam explanatory clauses into headlines layer-cake-style seems like an NYT pathology of anxious tone

what they *mean* is "US to back up Europe's fuel flow, ftb Russia ffs" (and so they shd say it)

sure but get rid of the comma!

"I'm phoning you, because I want to talk to you."

why are you pausing? are you short of breath? shouldn't you take an LFT??

commas are most often a sign of baroque sentence construction tendencies tbh, eliminate if at all in doubt

im reading the grammarly explanation of how a comma before because is usually wrong and sometimes right, and not exactly disagreeing -- but definitely wanting the option of "sometimes that wrong comma is good and right to help inflect delivery with the unexpected"

"US to back up Europe's fuel flow ftb Russia"

"US to back up Europe's fuel flow, ftb CAPITALISM ffs"

the NYT uses them (in headlines) to signal its self-important sense of measured objectivity

"pedalling furiously, a unicycling clown"

There's an old and probably apocryphal story about a famously cranky writer (usually Twain but possibly Hemingway) was told he didn't use enough commas. He sent his editor a page of just commas and said to use them as the editor saw fit.

I'm not anti-comma; I think punctuation aids understanding when used well. If you have a pair of commas that is not denoting a list, you usually intend a parenthetical phrase. Try replacing them with parentheses or with em dashes and see if it makes sense that way.

The theory is that (if European allies are reassured about energy supplies) they would be more willing to place sanctions on Moscow.

The theory is that—if European allies are reassured about energy supplies—they would be more willing to place sanctions on Moscow.

Those are no better than the original; the sentence doesn't make any sense without the material in between the punctuation.

Also I see mixed cases. If you're doing a conditional sentence, don't you need both verbs to agree? Like, if the main verb phrase is "would be more willing," then the first verb also needs to be conditional, right? Like "if European allies were reassured..." or even "if European allies were to be reassured..." But those are fussy.

How about

Reassuring European allies about energy supplies could make them more willing to back sanctions.

Or

European allies may be more willing to back sanctions if they are reassured about energy supplies

?

I agree with almost all the views expressed here, but

a) I don't agree with cutting 'that', as I've noted before re: Guardian (though a headline is different from regular prose)

b) I don't know what 'ftb' means in Mark's text.

ftb = internet shorthand for "because"

the joke is that the NYT will never use it but they absolutely should start

YMP: it's not mixed case (that would be nouns) but it is a mixed conditional, yes -- and yes, also an incorrectly mixed one: i suspect bcz the writer can't bring themsleves to be clear whether it's a speculative or a factual claim

mixed conditionals can and do exist but they're mainly deployed for highly speculative counterfactuals i believe

this is a theory in reported speech and the writer is basically hedging abt whether -- per the NYT's judgment -- it's a solid or a dodgy theory

Thanks, mark s, you are righter on the terminology. All my education happened in a previous century and even then I frequently erred on tense vs. mood vs. case; conditional, counterfactual, subjunctive?

But here's the thing: if the phrase is already speculative, do we also need to add that it's a theory?

I think it's implied by the hedging language already in there that it's a theory, so saying that it's a theory is unnecessary.

Compare

The theory goes that I will probably drink some bourbon on Saturday.

vs.

I will probably drink some bourbon on Saturday.

Not sure what "the theory goes" adds.

(And in this case it's not counterfactual because you bet your ass I am going to drink bourbon. Might not even wait till Saturday.)

possibly bcz the sources explicitly described it as being a theory, which is a newsworthy -- or anyway hintworthy -- fact in itself? in reporting terms there's a difference between "my theory is" and "their theory is"

but if you say this "their theory is" out loud, it gives too much of an impression that the NYT is commenting "here is what these goons are thinking, lol": hence "the theory is" = hedging between "what they think" and "what everyone thinks"

the NYT's passion for bogus objectivity is always tying it in silly knots (sometimes the knots are more elegantly tied than they are here)

yeah I think the clear takeaway here is that "the theory" is a bad subject for a news-communicating sentence

When I wrote headlines for a living we would sometimes do attribution first with a colon.

Experts: Drinking Horse Piss May Actually Worsen COVID Symptoms

Panel: Proud Boys Might Not Be Very Good Humans

Or after:

World Not Flat, Scientists Say

Clean Water Is Important, According to Experts

Theory-Oriented Headlines Inelegant - Sinker

hook line -sinker

not really on topic, but i've got a load of work to do today, including finishing writing an important document. so right now the most urgent thing is resolving the following question:

which combination of fonts and colours for title, subtitle and headers is the best lay out for a document, in this case a word document.

Colours?

Slightly surprised that you'd vary colours, but maybe I shouldn't be. You'd know best.

Is the issue here, Fizzles, about appealing to, or holding the attention of, a very particular audience?

it is partly, pinefox.

house style is a v light san serif with calibri body, which isn't compelling as a set of headers tbh, though it can work. in that vein, colours can help mark out the document as a 'house' production, however, i must admit it's partly to draw the attention to people more used to slides than reading documents that HERE IS A NEW SECTION.

the audience point - senior management in a company i work for, the seniority indicating lower-than-common cognitive function and attention span.

so i've been faffing around with fonts (obv because easier than finishing the content), and have decided i don't want the exact house style (*another* work document), and something different would be striking and help attract attention.

and after all, attractively laid out reports and analyses can be easier to digest.

no chance of getting in a consultant for it I suppose

no, i feel that right now rather than doing any more writing the most important thing is for me and me alone to sort out the fonts.

fuckit i need to set a two-hour timer and switch off all distractions. break first though, sitting here not actually doing anything to the document is quite tiring.

What happened?