I just put a full stop at the end. The syntactic ambiguity is still there which makes the sentence more fun. Also, I'd argue that putting a space between letters of one word or taking a space away from between two words isn't adding punctuation at all, so none of those options are valid.
I agree with John. In fact, I think the commas in the second version are wrong. It's correctly punctuated when you first see it without any marks, and I would imagine people are mostly adding them because they were told to. I'd be astonished if anyone chose to alter the meaning while doing so.
Surely , Richard, this poll needs four options (the "true for you" bit is confusing so I got rid of it):
- I'm a man and wrote "A woman, without her man, is nothing";
- I'm a man and wrote "A woman: without her, man is nothing";
- I'm a woman and wrote "A woman, without her man, is nothing";
- I'm a woman and wrote "A woman: without her, man is nothing".
Since I suspect there's a tendency toward the "A woman, without her man, is nothing" for both genders because the sentence reads like this when there's no punctuation (let's face it, "A woman: without her, man is nothing" is just not how you choose to organise a sentence with that meaning in English.). This means that women will be more likely to say it isn't true for them than men so at present, without information on the relative proportions of males and females doing the poll, you can't tell whether the difference in responses is because it is true or you just have more men on your website.
I just put a full stop at the end. The syntactic ambiguity is still there which makes the sentence more fun. Also, I'd argue that putting a space between letters of one word or taking a space away from between two words isn't adding punctuation at all, so none of those options are valid.
I guess i'm a man.
John:
Your poll ignores the possibility of other answers. For example:
A woman (without her man) is nothing.
A woman without, her man is nothing.
A woman without her man is no thing.
A woman without "her" man is nothing.
I agree with John. In fact, I think the commas in the second version are wrong. It's correctly punctuated when you first see it without any marks, and I would imagine people are mostly adding them because they were told to. I'd be astonished if anyone chose to alter the meaning while doing so.
I got:
A woman without Herman is nothing.
But then again, I'm a huge Munsters fan.
Surely , Richard, this poll needs four options (the "true for you" bit is confusing so I got rid of it):
- I'm a man and wrote "A woman, without her man, is nothing";
- I'm a man and wrote "A woman: without her, man is nothing";
- I'm a woman and wrote "A woman, without her man, is nothing";
- I'm a woman and wrote "A woman: without her, man is nothing".
Since I suspect there's a tendency toward the "A woman, without her man, is nothing" for both genders because the sentence reads like this when there's no punctuation (let's face it, "A woman: without her, man is nothing" is just not how you choose to organise a sentence with that meaning in English.). This means that women will be more likely to say it isn't true for them than men so at present, without information on the relative proportions of males and females doing the poll, you can't tell whether the difference in responses is because it is true or you just have more men on your website.