Young Writers Society

Okay, I've never really understood how to write this. I don't even know where you put the commas in. Someone, please explain it to me!

Which do you say:
A) You have no experience raising a child, let alone a girl.
B) You have no experience raising a girl, let alone a child.

A.


You did A correct. "Child" is a general term. "girl" is more specific. The latter choice, no, because you're becoming more general, and not specific.

That is something you'd say to a drunk father who is a women hater, "You have no right to raise a child, [you're being general] let alone a girl" with the use of girl you become more specific. This sentence structure is real fun because it is pretty, and I love the way it works You can totally soccer punch someone's weakness by becoming more specific.

Hope that helped.

Thanks!
I thought was how you write it, but I wasn't positive.

I concur.

I've always wanted to use that word....

McMourning wrote:Okay, I've never really understood how to write this. I don't even know where you put the commas in. Someone, please explain it to me!

Which do you say:
A) You have no experience raising a child, let alone a girl.
B) You have no experience raising a girl, let alone a child.

Uh... both work. It just depends which one you wnat to emphasize.

If, for instance, I have a father who has only daughters, I would use A because I want to emphasize that he can't raise girls.

If I had a father who had a mix of children and say his daughter got pregnant and joined the circus, to properly insult him I would use the latter because not only does that hit him hard that his daughter sucks, but it also says he's an inadequete father because he could never raise a child.

So while the first one emphasizes the fact he can't raise girls, the second one would be more insulting because it emphasizes that he can't raise ANY child.

My two cents.

The second one sounds strange to me; I can't really think of an instance where you might use it outside of (satirically? idk). I'd go with the first one: general to specific)