![]() ![]() On the day I borrowed the department’s digital camera to take pictures of parts of her body that made her blush. In the weeks to follow, I repeated this to myself over and over. Even without the report, I would want to help you. But she quickly put me at ease: Yes, she nodded. Would she let me? I hung those words on a line between her and me, embarrassed to have my underthings aired, flapping in the wind. I had my own confession to make: I wanted to write her case report. Would I meet her at her next appointment? Judd, Cheryl’s confessions spilled out in small waves around my ankles. As he wrapped up, I sensed her unanswered questions and lingered behind. Her eyes darted back and forth from him to me she was overwhelmed and seemingly apologetic. Judd laid out plans for her upcoming surgery: what tests had been ordered, where and when. Judd had excitedly told me about her case, mine was the wide-eyed expression: such a rare diagnosis-one seen only on board exams, not in real life, unless you’re lucky. I guess I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I would later discover we were the same height. Her big blue anxious eyes made her seem child-like. Martin (or Cheryl, as she insisted) looked over at me and gave me a hesitant but kind smile. Chretien, a resident working with me today.” I stood deferentially to the side, allowing Dr. A wisp of a woman in her early 50s with short curly brown hair and pale legs that dangled limply from underneath her paper gown sat perched at the end of the examining table. She won’t bite.” I took a deep breath as I always did prior to meeting a patient for the first time and knocked.įrom within, I heard a muted “Yes? Come in.” There is no ambiguity in "his eyes were wide open".Outside the closed examination room door, I paused to shoot a quick glance at my preceptor who gave me a nod and smile, as if to say “Go ahead. In the post-positioned form and as predicative adjective that's not necessary and the hyphenated form is even considered wrong for predicative use. In this case the hyphenated form 'wide-open' clearly shows the reader that it's a compound word, thus the hyphen is justified. 2 adjectives that modify "eyes" and that's clearly different from 'wide open' as adverb + adjective. If you write "with his wide open eyes, he." this could be misread as "wide and open", ie. Personally, I try to avoid confusion with my punctuation by using as little as possible but if I see the potential of ambiguity or misinterpretation that could be avoided with punctutation, I use it. Then there are others who are a bit overbearing and use so many punctuation marks that you lose track of what the sentence is trying to say. When you look at some texts from native speakers on the internet, you'll find a number of writers who use practically no punctuation at all, except the period. It seems that hyphenation - or for that matter, punctuation in general - has become a bit of a question of personal style. he didn't speak at all, it was the look in his eyes that said "Go away!"Ĭlick to expand.It's hard to provide a general answer for that. Of course, that is anatomically unlikely, so most readers might interpret it as figurative usage, ie. Granted, this form does not guarantee it, but it suggests it.ī) The literal meaning has changed now, because he is now speaking with his eyes. With his wide-open eyes he said, "Go away!"Ī) " his wide-open eyes" suggests that his eyes are always wide open. If you change that, it becomes ambiguous: "With his eyes wide open, he said" conveys the same idea as " Having his eyes wide open, he said" or "With his eye being wide open, he said" Meaning, they are not wide open by nature, they are not always like that. With his eyes wide open, he said, "Go away!"įor me, the post-positioned adjective has the effect that it implies a verbal action. Most of the time the meaning changes - or at least a nuance of meaning. (I think!)Īlthough I agree with velisarius in general, you shouldn't think that postpositioned adjectives can freely be changed to normal attributive adjectives. > Here the same phrase can be seen as a post-positioned attributive adjective. > Here the adjectival phrase wide open is used in a predicative way. The first sentence is different from the second: ![]() Click to expand.What do you mean by "another" example? ![]()
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