Comments on: Making Sense of “Since”

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:46:45 +0000

No, there shouldn’t be any confusion here. “Since happier times” could only mean BEFORE the death of Andie and Bruce’s parents. That is clearly implied by the first sentence. Therefore, they’d had the dog before the parents died.

The post should have dealt with the use of a better word here instead of pointing out a possible point of ambiguity when there really is none. The use of the word ’since’ in the second instance is not ambiguous at all. It becomes confusing only when someone begins to think it’s confusing and starts making noise. DailyWritingTips had better posts than this.

By: Cassie Tuttle

Cassie Tuttle — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:42:11 +0000

The ambiguity of the second “since” hadn’t occurred to me until you posed the question. And now that I’ve given it some thought, here’s the problem I see:

The first “since” (since the death of their parents) is clear, and establishes a time frame, i.e., the period after their parents died, which occurred on a specific date. But the second “since” (since happier times) is not defined; there is no point of reference for the second “since” in terms of date, year, or defining event.

By: Maeve

Maeve — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:26:42 +0000

Perhaps the simplest fix would be to change the second “since” to “in.”

By: Grace S.

Grace S. — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:08:43 +0000

I think the confusion could be avoided (even if the reviewer wanted to use “since” twice in the paragraph) by the addition of a few words. In this case, it should read “. . . Friday, who had been a member of their family since happier times . . .”, which means something different from “. . . Friday, who had become a member of their family since happier times . . .” It’s probably still better to reword one of the sentences altogether, however.

By: Mel

Mel — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:07:29 +0000

I don’t get it. Maybe that’s because English is not my first language (nor my second). My understanding is, as you’ve put it, that “they’d had the dog before the parents died”. For me, “Since happier times” could only mean “when their parents were alive”, same as what Janeane White wrote. I thought that was pretty much established in the first sentence. Would you like to elucidate? I’m a fan of English and DWT, and I would very much like to master the language as much as I can in this lifetime. So if I don’t get the ambiguity, something’s wrong.

But I am aware (and I understand) that using the same word in a paragraph is considered poor style, and the use of another word here would have sounded better. Thanks and more power!