Not at all Brian. I was a little cross with myself because of my
schoolboy error ;-).
You missed the mistake in tenses in that radio interviewer. It
should have been, " ... do you not think that if you *had done* this
on Friday ...". It is a common problem on the US media: we are
losing part of the past because no one is using the pluperfect tense.
Chris
~~ >-)-
C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
+44 (0)7092 251126
www.threeshoes.co.uk
homepage.mac.com/zuiko
On 14 Dec 2005, at 23:33, Brian Swale wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I didn't really mean to get up the nose of Chris and I hope you
> noticed the
> :-)> Chris.
>
> One source of persistent irritation for me is a practice that our
> announcers
> (interviewers) on National Radio here have; and that is to ask
> questions in a
> negative form. I frequently take issue with them on it. And
> sometimes they
> take notice for a day or two.
>
> These announcers/interviewers tend to be somewhat aggressive in their
> questioning manner, and often seem to disagree with the person being
> interviewed. So a question might go like this.
>
> For example: " Do you not think that if you did this on Friday
> rather than
> Thursday there would be a better outcome?"
>
> It seems to me that if the person being questioned answers "Yes" or
> "No" it
> would mean about the same.
>
> For my dollar I'd rather have the form of the question be
> " Do you think that ... .... ?"
> Then a Yes or No answer would be quite unambiguous.
>
> Maybe I'm out of practice with current argument, since most questioned
> people answer No, in agreement. Or something.
>
> Brian
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