01-03-2007, 09:47
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חבר מתאריך: 26.10.01
הודעות: 35,433
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זה סיפור שאהוב על כל חובבי הפיסוק (התחבירי!)
Jameson's telegram
In the 1890s there was a large number of English miners working in the Boer republic in southern Africa called the Transvaal. It was thought that these English miners and other settlers who were denied such civil rights as the vote would rise up if raiders from British territory were to invade. The ill-fated leader of these would-be raiders was a man called Jameson. But when the settlers telegraphed Jameson, their message contained a tragic confusion of meaning. The telegram read as follows:
It is under these circumstances that we feel constrained to call upon you to come to our aid should a disturbance arise here the circumstances are so extreme that we cannot but believe that you and the men under you will not fail to come to the rescue of people who are so situated.
This is a famous case of the power of punctuation. For example, if you put a full stop after the word 'aid', then the meaning is absolutely clear. The message means 'Come at once'. But if you put the full stop after the word 'here', then the message probably means, 'We might need you at some later date if a disturbance does arise here so, hold your horses'…. The placing of a full stop, in other words, can affect the entire meaning of a vital telegram and, as they say, the rest is history. Jameson read the unpunctuated telegram, decided it was an invitation to invade immediately and that is what he did. The Jameson raid was a disaster.
http://www.hyperhistory.org/index.p...mid=677&op=page
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