Re: Clarity of Orders

Adam,

Is English your first language? It may not be for the player in 
question, and the "s" on "supports" could be a typo. I'm not an English 
major by any stretch of the imagination, and only Libby knows for sure, 
but I would not rule these orders as ambiguous unless the player had 
been warned about this type of thing earlier in the game.

I know there are "strict constructionists" out there, and that's one of 
the reasons we like human GM's around here.

And for the record, I'm not trying to determine the player's intent. I 
do not care what his or her intent was. I'm taking a poorly written 
order, and deciding that it only has one possible meaning, using just my 
own particular brand of logic, in a case taken out of context, and with 
some circumstances assumed.

Regards to all,

Mike A.

Adam Kuehn wrote:

>Michael D. Ashland wrote:
>  
>
>>You are going to get opinions both ways, but "to" is a preposition, not
>>a verb, and as such, the presence of the word "support(s)" (a transitive
>>verb in this case) in the orders would settle the question in my mind.
>>    
>>
>
>Case 6 is an infinitive, read literally, so I can see how your 
>argument might hold there.  But I do not understand your willingness 
>to parse the phrase "to supports" down into its components and then 
>rule that "supports" is somehow more important because of which part 
>of speech it represents.  By itself, "to" has a clear meaning. 
>("[U]sed as a function word to indicate movement", if you want the 
>exact, pedantic phrase from Merriam-Webster online.)  By itself, 
>"supports" has an equally clear, but opposite, meaning.  Their 
>concatenation, "to supports", is grammatically nonsensical.
>
>I just don't see how the part of speech of the component words helps 
>you divine the intent of the person writing the order.  I'm not 
>trying to be overly picky, I'm just genuinely interested in hearing 
>why you think the part of speech helps, given that each word is 
>independently successful in conveying unambiguous meaning.
>
>In my view, as likely as not we are looking at a cut-and-paste error. 
>The player intended one thing at first, and then tried to cut in the 
>opposite thing but failed to delete the superceded material.  But 
>which material is to be superceded?  There's just no way to know.
>
>-Adam
>
>
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