02 September 2005

Sentence Diagrams and Statutes

So, while I sat in the office most of the afternoon with no clients dropping by, I spent the time trying to sentence diagram a statute. I am trying to figure out how to prove to the Court of Appeals that its interpretation of a statute is wrong. Mind you, I'm rusty at this and I haven't gotten the copy of Higher lessons in English: A work on English grammar and composition I ordered yet. Still, a few web pages got me most of the way along.

After a couple hours of doing this, I came to one conclusion All legislators must be taken out and shot. Tom has brought me around on the death penalty. However, the only reason I favor it is that the other option would be far more cruel. The only other appropriate punishment would be to make legislators sit down and draw sentence diagrams of their own convoluted, self - contradictory, obscure statutes with 7 or 8 conjunctions or subjunctions as well as 3 to 4 prepositional phrases each. It is a punishment far worse than death.

Oh yeah, does anyone know if subjunctives are handled the same way conjunctives are in a sentencing diagram? I think so but I haven't been able to find confirmation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The only other appropriate punishment would be to make legislators sit down and draw sentence diagrams of their own convoluted, self - contradictory, obscure statutes with 7 or 8 conjunctions or subjunctions as well as 3 to 4 prepositional phrases each

I've been a proponent of this for coming on 20 years, since I was capable of having an opinion.

Wait, no, sorry. I meant the shooting part. There's no way they could possibly pass laws they understood.