Why aren't colons optional?

[David C. Ullrich]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 17:21:16 GMT, Courageous <jkraska at san.rr.com>
wrote:

>
>>Ah, Strunk&White "the Elements of Style" agree;
>
>While I have no comments whatsover on the correctness
>of the grammatical form, I will point out that sometimes
>stodgy old grammaticians who think they know how the
>language _ought_ to be used are sometimes out of touch
>with how their own language is _actually_ used.

Um, the phrase "gimme a break" springs to mind here -
was just supposed to be a slightly amusing comment
on F's "People who complain about this always use colons
correctly in their own posts", I wasn't actually complaining
that the guy was using _bad_ English.

(Although I'll admit that the use of a colon that way
has always bugged me, (not enough to complain about),
and I have a better idea of why than I did. if I
say "A whittler needs" what's supposed to come next
if what the whittler needs, and what the whittler needs
is "a knife", not ": a knife"...)

>C//
>


David C. Ullrich