[Gllug] LinuxDoc / DocBook Documentation Writting

[Tom Schutzer-Weissmann]

On Thu, 2006-09-14 at 12:56 +0100, John G Walker wrote:

> > In Nix's example the speaker's left out "to go" - "She's going to go
> > to London and talk on global warming."
> > 
> 
> Why shouldn't the speaker leave out "to go"? Is verbosity a virtue? In
> my book, less verbose is better.

There's no speaker, it was a written example. And is including two words
really being verbose, when they avoid confusion?

I really like the expression "to go and do something", and I don't see
why it should be confused with "to be going to do something" just
because both include forms of the verb "go".

In "I'm going to talk", "going" has nothing to do with physical
displacement, it's one of the many forms we have for expressing
futurity, in the absence of any future tense in English.

In "I'm going to London", "going" does refer to a physical movement - an
action - that probably will occur in the future, but the futurity here
is expressed by the use of the present continuous tense.

What you're saying is that it's ok to glue these two forms together and
use the same "going" in two completely separate senses at once, where
it's both an action and isn't:

"She's going to London and talk on global warming."

You can't! It's clearer if you switch the subject to the first person:

"I'm going to London and talk on global warming."

No passing resemblance to the imperative "go and do something", or the
entirely normal "I'm going to London to talk on global warming" is going
to hide the fact that this is nonsense.

all the best,
Tom SW



		
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