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  #1  
Old 07-Oct-2008, 09:49
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Default sentence error

Hi, everyone. I came across a sentence in a test this morning, which goes, "The first twenty to thirty pages of James Joyce would give any reader a big headache. Fortunately, the rest pages are not hopeless difficult." The test taker is required to copy the original sentence with errors corrected if there's any. I would like to add something to the sentence and the new version of the sentence would be "The first twenty to thirty pages of the work by James Joyce would give any reader a big headache. Fortunately, the rest pages are not hopeless difficult." But I am not sure of this revision. I remember Ulysses---the whole of it---is a big headache, so I will not say "The first twenty to thirty pages of Ulysses by James Joyce would give any reader a big headache. Fortunately, the rest pages are not hopeless difficult." Would you please give me some advice on how to revise the original sentence?
Thanks.
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Old 07-Oct-2008, 15:13
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Default Re: sentence error

The first 20-30 pages of any James Joyce will give you a headache. It is not necessary to specify anything.

There does seem to be an error in the next sentence: "Fortunately, the rest of the pages are not hopelessly difficult".
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Old 07-Oct-2008, 21:41
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Default Re: sentence error

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Originally Posted by Anglika View Post
The first 20-30 pages of any James Joyce will give you a headache. It is not necessary to specify anything.

There does seem to be an error in the next sentence: "Fortunately, the rest of the pages are not hopelessly difficult".
Thanks for your help, Anglila. So you mean that I only need to change the second sentence in the original version to "Fortunately, the rest of the pages are not hopelessly difficult" while keeping the first sentence intact, do you? Is "the first twenty to thirty pages of James Joyce" correct? Or do we have to change it a little bit to "of any James Joyce"? But, in my opinion, this situation calles for at least using "the work/book/ novel". Can it be the case that coincidentally the first 20-30 pages of any James Joyce will give us a big headache while the rest of any book by him happens to be relatively easy?
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Old 07-Oct-2008, 22:09
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Default Re: sentence error

You can leave the first sentences as it is.

And yes, Can it be the case that coincidentally the first 20-30 pages of any James Joyce will give us a big headache while the rest of any book by him happens to be relatively easy? - that seems to be the gist of the passage.
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