To repeat:

https://grammarist.com/punctuation/terminal-punctuation-how-to-end-a-sentence/

A terminal punctuation mark is the punctuation mark required to end a sentence. There are four types of terminal punctuation to choose from: the period, question mark, ellipsis, and exclamation mark.

A colon is specifically designated as internal punctuation and a clear marker that the sentence continues.

See also: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/288011/how-should-one-punctuate-a-bulleted-list-in-the-middle-of-a-sentence-not-at-the

The specific type of sentence being used here is a compound sentence, which consists of several independent clauses conjoined by punctuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_(linguistics)#By_structure

The Bedford Handbook specifies that:

For example, one can use a colon after an independent clause to direct attention to a list, an appositive, or a quotation, and it can be used between independent clauses if the second summarizes or explains the first.

I am dubious of Josh’s reasoning here. However, I also think Josh’s revert may have been legal / the original action illegal for other reasons.

If the rule had said “subject to the following conditions:” then it would clearly be including the list as part of the sentence.

The rule actually says “subject to the folkowing conditions:”, which is meaningless (“folkowing” is not a word). If “folkowing conditions” were defined elsewhere in the ruleset, the colon would clearly (to me) be at the end of the sentence, because the thought expressed by the sentence would now be complete – it would be a grammatically incorrect choice of punctuation to do that, but that would by far not be the worst English mistake in a ruleset that contains words like “omptionally”.

With “folkowing” undefined, I think there are two reasonable ways to interpret the rule: “the change is subject to the ‘folkowing conditions’, which are defined as follows:”, and “the change is subject to the ‘folkowing conditions’, defined elsewhere”. With the former interpretation, it is all one sentence, with the colon doing a lot of heavy lifting. With the latter interpretation, the section before the list is a complete thought that acts as a complete sentence in its own right (that, grammatically incorrectly, ends with a colon). So it depends on whether the mere fact that there’s a colon there is strong enough to force an interpretation in which the sentence continues, and the ruleset doesn’t provide an obvious way to make that decision.

So the stack exchange link seems to be irrelevant in this case. It’s explicitly about starting lists in the middle of a sentence, and the examples given in it are continuations of that sentence. The sentence is literally left unfinished before the colon.

In the actual ruleset, the bullet point itself is a complete sentence, starting with a capital letter. If you attempt to read it as a run-on sentence the same way you would in the example, the grammar doesn’t work.

As for the other sources, I’m still doing my own research on it so I’m not casting a vote just yet.

It’s also worth noting that if “folkowing conditions:” isn’t treated as a definition of what the “folkowing conditions” are, the ToTT actions may have been impossible to perform due to not being properly defined. If the rule had said something along the lines of “as a heist action, you can change one character in a rule, subject to omptionally”, would that action be performable?

That said, I think the decision made there doesn’t affect this CFJ – if it’s interpreted as all one sentence you have to interpret the bulleted list as a definition of “folkowing conditions” in which case there isn’t a problem, and if it isn’t interpreted as all one sentence then Josh’s revert and thus subsequent actions were illegal anyway.

I realized that I forgot to include a revision of the ruleset itself, so I added that as well.

Okay, so I’m going with
According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon_(punctuation)), “In modern English usage, a complete sentence precedes a colon, while a list, description, explanation, or definition follows it. The elements which follow the colon may or may not be a complete sentence: since the colon is preceded by a sentence, it is a complete sentence whether what follows the colon is another sentence or not.”

Plus, the Bedford Handbook’s example of a list is nothing like the one in the ruleset. Ours can stand alone as a complete sentence, while the list it gave clearly isn’t able to.

Actually, CoV , the whole question is moot.
Folkowing isn’t a word. Tools of the Trade needs every word in the amended rule to be a word. Therefore, the only valid change is one that turns folkowing into a valid word, which means charactery wasn’t a valid move.

@SingularByte: it only needs that if the condition specified in the list is part of the conditions for performing the Tools of the Trade action, which (ironically) it probably only is if it’s part of the same sentence!

@SingularByte The wikipedia page of the colon is misleading as it utilises a slightly non-standard use of the term ‘sentence’.

Sentences are usually defined one of a few different ways. The most common is simply that it is a string of words that comprises a complete thought; in this case, the complete thought must include the bullet point.

Functional linguistics would define a sentence as I did above, by morphological features, including the punctuation that as standard ends a sentence. Again, the morphological features of the sentence in the ruleset favour ending the sentence at the full stop.

What you have on the colon page is a piece of non-functional linguistics, which is using ‘sentence’ when it should be using ‘constituent’ (see Constituents. But even under non-functional linguistics the sentence is required to be the maximal unit of structure; a colon can only delineate a sentence if everything before the colon stands in isolation to what follows it. That is not the case here.

I am relatively confident that if we gathered 100 linguists or syntasticists we would get over 90 AGAINST votes here.

As we’ve broken the 4 houor seal: 

“The folkowing conditions” is a nonsense phrase that doesnt allow the bulleted list after it to describe a proscriptive condition. It renders that requirement meaningless.

By the way, I am ok with however this shakes out. My motivations are not to steal Josh’s team’s thunder. I’m using this as the opportunity to have the discussion, with some stakes so that everyone’s true opinions are surfaced.

I just want clarity on how we as a group are planning to treat punctuation with regard to sentences, as well as how we treat the ability of corrupted words to render the rest of a statement meaningless.

How much nonsense words are required before a statement can’t make legal sense? The line we are willing to tolerate is what I want to understand.

Okay. Apologies to keep flip-flopping, but here’s my current stance.

To lay out the mutually exclusive options:
*Folkowing conditions are undefined, and therefore cannot be met.
That means all tools of the trades are illegal since the creation of folkowing.
*Folkowing is read as a typo. The bullet point is a valid restriction. Both rules changed have illegal words. Therefore, all tools of the trades are illegal since the creation of folkowing.
*The conditions are seen as gibberish. I don’t like this option. It seems lazy.
*Finally, we can treat folkowing as a compound word - folk-owing. That is, us folk are owed that the conditions are all met. All tools of the trades have been illegal since it became folkowing.

I think this last one is my preferred reading, since just discarding or ignoring the way it’s written feels off to me.

CoV , but I think we need to go back further with the reversions.

I understand, of course, the irony in saying that we need the reversions to go back further after I voted early and broke the ability to edit the cfj.

Eh, it’s probably something that needs to be discussed as a mutually exclusive option anyway.

I defer to Josh’s superior linguini on the sentence debate and agree with him the colon does not delineate a sentence (which was my first thought anyway), but unfortunately I’ll still have to vote on this per SB’s comment on the Crew containing a malformed word ‘omptionally’ which invalidates our Triumph anyway. We should revert the ‘charactery’ tools of the trade for the same reason

Charactery is actually a real
English word:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/charactery

But ‘folkowing’ definitely isn’t, so the ‘charactery’ tools of the trade is invalidated because not every word in the rule Tools of the Trade is a valid English word

Even if, of course, you think the colon delineates a sentence (and if you don’t ‘charactery’ is doubly illegal by dollar sign and by Tools of the Trade condition).

CoV

After sleeping on it, I think my preferred interpretation is to interpret the rule as “As a Heist action, a Participant may … subject to the ‘folkowing conditions’, which are:”. This would make it all one sentence, which would make the “charactery” change illegal; but it would also prevent the amendment of rules that contain nonwords, which would make the “bolk” change illegal too (as the rule already contained the non-word “omptionally”).

This CFJ therefore doesn’t revert things to the correct gamestate. However, CFJs don’t have to do that at BlogNomic, and this at least reverts things to a known neutral gamestate that has similar balance properties to the correct one. So on that basis,

I am enacting this now - just to notify that I will also be applying the principle expressed here to interpret the ‘charactery’ edit to be illegal, so will be reverting to this edit https://wiki.blognomic.com/index.php?title=Ruleset&oldid=28794.