Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad (was Re: elves and jinn (...))

On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 03:30:53PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> One can never be too sure.  I once received a flame from someone who seemed
> clearly to *agree* with my expressed position; it finally dawned on me that
> he had understood the idiom "A, not to mention B" (meaning of course
> "A and obviously also B") to mean "A but not B".
This reminds me of an experience I had in high school English class.
In a paper I had written "A, if not B" to mean "at least A, and possibly
B", but the teacher took it to mean "A, but not B".  Even after I
explained what I meant, she couldn't see my interpretation, and since that
completely changed the point I was making to an invalid one, I got a low
grade on the paper.  (I tried to show how the rest of the paper supported
my interpretation rather than hers, but still no go.)

Ah, well.

-Mark