Subject: Re: Official Permission Request
Author:
Posted on: 2010-02-05 07:51:00 UTC

Justification is a heck of a meaningful work, and things like it are often of publishable quality. A few typos, and some stylistic things :

  • "but the she turned a corner and vanished from my view and I thought no more of it." should probably be "but then she".
  • "as though she were running, not from a person but from her own thoughts." probably could use a comma between "person" and "but". "But" isn't separating two independent clauses, but it is being used to show contrast, and "not from a person".
  • "It was hard blow, I will admit, yet one which I too with an ease which surprised even me" should probably be "I took".
  • "I had the image of her forever engrained" scans... artificially. That may be the goal, since it's probably not something the viewpoint character is proud to say, but if not I'd recommend "her image" instead of "image of her". "Engrained" is an archaic form of colouring. You probably want "ingrained", to have deeply impress into a surface.
  • "I looked back at my professor only once during that ceremony, and that to shake his hand properly." is technically correct if the last "that" refers to the time the viewpoint character looked back, but it's not clear and may be read as a 'dummy subject'. "Then" is typically used when you want to refer to a time period. If you intend for it to sound archaic, though, "that" is preferred.
  • "at the Royal library." may be better as "The Royal Library" or "the Royal Library". While you're not citing a specific library, it's probably best to err on the side of proper nouns here with how many Royal Libraries are treated as such in the Real World.
  • "Or perhaps I am reading too much into the situation and I was the only one affected by her absence." is probably complex enough that it could take a comma between "situation" and "and". It's borderline, so try both and see what you prefer
  • "when I could not avoid thinking, and I would always reply with a jest or a grin, not truly present." seems like "not truly present" is modifying an early part of the sentence. That may be the goal, if you want his thoughts as a whole to be somewhere else. If you want to focus more on the jest or grin not being there but the mind being present, it may be preferable to pull out the comma after "grin".
  • "I began a respected Professor in my own right" may simply be an archaic use I'm not familiar with, but it's jarring to modern eyes. Either switching from "began" to "became" or (less likely) "Professor" to "professorship" would flow much better.
  • ", and is tainted by something I could not quite name, " is technically incorrect for having the wrong tense -- "is" should probably be something like "it was" or "was". You may want this to attract the eye, but it's a dangerous tool.
  • "still not pulling her hand out of mind." would hopefully be "mine".
  • "long.”Gently, she tried" needs a space or two between "long." and "Gently".
  • "bear to spent my remaining" should probably be "spend".
  • "some happily and other less so" should probably be "others".
  • There's a few of pronouns with unknown antecedents. You can almost always get away with such generic pronouns when they function as a 'dummy subject', but such an option is best reserved for when the pronoun can refer to everyone, or when who it refers to can not be identified. The most significant case of this would be "Only recently had they allowed" -- presumably referring to a generic they that watched the viewpoint character -- but "I did not see her on that first trip out" likewise relies on the knowledge that "the child" is female. We've not be given that yet, and even with that information the phrase arguably ends up feeling like it should point to the nurse anyway. Native English speakers generally won't have a problem with this matters, but it's best to read them aloud and compare them to alternative phrasings to see if a clearer version does not distract from the tone. This is a case-by-case thing, though.
  • A few words -- dresses, nursery, and murmured would be the ones I noticed the most -- are repeated a few times in a short period, and then dropped from the writing. This may have been intentional and I'm missing the purpose, but there are alternative words that could be used without erring on the side of urple, or more distributed uses may reduce the issue.

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