A question of tense

MetaBob said:

It might have a few semicolons. I won't bother to check that, I don't use many.

This site doesn't seem to use hyphens at all even though I use more than a few of them in my usual writing. Thanks for noticing. My hyphens seem to get translated to dashes here, just as my indents get translated to paragraph breaks. Ah well, though perhaps I'm not paying close enough attention to the difference.

Hyphens, ellipses, semicolons. To me, the choice to use one or the other is often a matter of ... choice.

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My post was solely responding to the quoted post--a different poster. I gave up on your writing some time ago.

KeithD said:

My post was solely responding to the quoted post--a different poster. I gave up on your writing some time ago.

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Perfect!

Hypoxia said:

You're too tense. Relax. Dream of em-dashes soaring over a rainbow. Or that soared over a rainbow. Or that would have soared. Or are just sore.

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I'm past tense .

KeithD is quite right to correct me - the number of incorrect spellings of words I have imprinted in my brain over the years is astonishing. Nothing so bad, though, as the time at uni when I suddenly didn't know how to use the word "the." I didn't know what it meant, how to use it, even how to spell it. Luckily, a good night's sleep solved the brain fade. At the time I put it down to bad dope...

I always use hyphens too, not em dashes. Lazy typist, but folk figure it out .

electricblue66 said:

, so I'm now a little bit older AND a little bit wiser. It's not often that happens .

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The older thing happens relentlessly, ceaselessly, depressingly, daily, without let up. My sarcastic teenage kids remind me of it all the time. The wiser thing happens in little bursts, unexpectedly, like a good laugh during a bad sitcom. I try to give those little bursts the appreciation they're due when they happen.

SimonDoom said:

The older thing happens relentlessly, ceaselessly, depressingly, daily, without let up. My sarcastic teenage kids remind me of it all the time. The wiser thing happens in little bursts, unexpectedly, like a good laugh during a bad sitcom. I try to give those little bursts the appreciation they're due when they happen.

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We have a tradition in my family that I'm allowed two shit dad jokes a year, and my daughter has agreed to laugh. It's an unspoken thing. It's a moral victory when I impress her, which I know I've done when she broadcasts whatever I've said to her mates. I have secret "likes" .

Mind you, she started doing it when she was eight, which was eighteen years ago, and I'm only just catching on. I'm a dad, it's my job.

MetaBob said:

I believe I unwound what I'd been tripping over in the two sentences I began it with ... resolving to my present satisfaction (though that could still change) the tense issue

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The new chapter is out. Those who read it might come to realize that the one easily comprehended paragraph I cited, which caused so much upset to some here, is far from the most controversial issue this chapter raised. I'm actually rather pleased with the result, though of course I'm sure it could be improved ... tastes on such matters inevitably differ.

Books 1 and 2 are almost entirely posted here now, just an epilogue for each and then it's on to Book 3. Fwiw, I think Book 3 is the best of them, though there's a lot I like about the others. Still working on it, and it's far from done.

Thanks to all who contributed their thoughts here ... I learned from all of it.

MetaBob said:

The new chapter . I learned from all of it.

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Don't mean to be churlish, but you didn't. The final sentence (the one starting "It went on for a minute . . . ") has all the flaws that it had from the start, as pointed out to you by many people on this thread who know what they're talking about. You ignored all the advice you got. It's not just a matter of style; it's a matter of fundamental grammar, diction, and punctuation.

I plugged both your sentences into a sentence diagramming app, and it couldn't diagram either one of them because they are ungrammatical.

Ah, Simon.

MetaBob said:

Thanks to all who contributed their thoughts here ... I learned from all of it.

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SimonDoom said:

Don't mean to be churlish, but you didn't.

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For one thing, I didn't specify what exactly it was that I learned here, nor whether I learned the same thing(s) from everyone who contributed here.

For another, I didn't actually ask for help with grammar in general, just tense in two specific sentences. You can claim those sentences are ungrammatical if you like, and you may well be correct in detail if not also ... churlish, but I don't worship at the altar of grammar. Neither do you, obviously. For me, strictly correct grammar is a tool in the writer's kit, one of many. If the writing works, if it's comprehensible and interesting and entertaining and in a pinch, defensible, which in this case it is, then ... it works. As I previously noted, alternatives to the concluding phrase of the sentences I requested help for were far clumsier than my original. If any had worked, I would've heeded. But they didn't. So I kept it. Some here provided far more pertinent advice about that choice than others, notably NotWise, Hypoxia, and TarnishedPenny. With wit and wisdom. My especial thanks to all three.

For yet another, I didn't actually get the solution to the tense issue I faced with those two sentences from anyone else here, I figured that out myself, as previously noted, though I will be the first to say that the discussion here helped guide me on the path toward that solution. Whether you personally like that solution or not is immaterial ... I'm not writing for you or for any other individual reader but one: myself. As every good writer should.

And, of course, as I've already done (twice), I sincerely thank all those who contributed your thoughts here. I learned something from all of them. I'm learning from them still. Would I request help like this again? Yeah, probably, depending on the specific issue(s), though I would gear up more first.

The final version of the two sentences in question from my now-published chapter, with words irrelevant to the question redacted as before:

She knelt beside me and I felt a fingertip trace its way slowly, gently caressing, more fingertips resting nearby. It went on for a minute or two, soothed me at a time I had a pretty good idea what would come next, and dreaded it.

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MetaBob said:

If the writing works, if it's comprehensible and interesting and entertaining and in a pinch, defensible, which in this case it is, then ... it works.

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Wrong on all counts.

But I probably should stop feeding the troll.

She knelt beside me and I felt a fingertip trace its way slowly, gently caressing, more fingertips resting nearby. It went on for a minute or two, soothed me at a time I had a pretty good idea what would come next, and dreaded it.

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That's still really clunky. I had to read it twice to parse it. Aside from nebulous, ghostly fingertips (are they hers, I assume so), I can't make sense of the two "its" in the second sentence. The first "it" appears to be the caress, but the last "it" is something else, yet to happen. It's a torturous sentence to navigate, that's for sure; very confusing. If the whole story is similarly written, I'm not sure how long I'd last, trying to read it.

electricblue66 said:

That's still really clunky. I had to read it twice to parse it. Aside from nebulous, ghostly fingertips (are they hers, I assume so), I can't make sense of the two "its" in the second sentence. The first "it" appears to be the caress, but the last "it" is something else, yet to happen. It's a torturous sentence to navigate, that's for sure; very confusing. If the whole story is similarly written, I'm not sure how long I'd last, trying to read it.

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Give it a whirl, if you like. I did that for one of your pieces back in February, on another thread. It's the very first paragraph in the chapter so you won't have to read far, and of course the words I redacted here are present there so the context of "dreaded" in that sentence should make more sense. But of course it's the last regular chapter in a 40K-word book, so if you really wanted the full context you would have to go back a bit further, though that shouldn't be necessary.

Most people seem to like my stuff here, notwithstanding the 1-star bomb that just landed on this newest chapter. I expect it won't be the last.

MetaBob said:

If the writing works, if it's comprehensible and interesting and entertaining and in a pinch, defensible, which in this case it is, then ... it works.

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You've had at least 8 people on this thread with writing experience tell you that the sentences were incomprehensible and/or ungrammatical. Therefore, they're incomprehensible. The problems were pointed out to you, and you didn't respond or acknowledge them. You ignored the advice that was being given to you. If you are going to ask people to take time to respond to your writing, you should listen carefully to what they have to say and try to learn from them.

I'm not trying to pile on. Like most of the others on this thread, I posted a reply to try to be helpful, and to give constructive criticism. If the same 8 authors posted similar kinds of comments to something I wrote, I'd damn well change it, because if they didn't understand it then I obviously wouldn't be writing it correctly.

As just one example you didn't respond to: the word "It" to start the second sentence. It's a pronoun with no noun antecedent. What does "it" refer to? Nothing. Nobody knows what "it" refers to. I don't think you do. This was pointed out to you, and you ignored it. It's not a matter of taste or discretion or style. It's basic grammar and clarity. I won't regurgitate the other points because they've already been made, but the problem with "It" gives you a flavor of the problems that pervade the two sentences.

To be fair and constructive, one of the reasons I'm following up is that I read some of the story and parts of the other chapters. You have the makings of a good story, you have a good vocabulary, and you have a good visual sense -- something I appreciate. In chapter 1, for example, I noticed this passage:

"Sure enough, it was easier to see the details of her eyes now and I couldn't help but look deeper. They were amazing, that orange-gold pattern around the pupil appearing like a 30-point flower, the motion making it slowly change shape. I tried counting points but kept losing track."

There are some things I would suggest tweaking, but you obviously have a keen visual sense and you use words in an interesting way to convey what you're seeing. A little more mindfulness of grammar and style would make it even better.

Happily, there are quite enough writers here writing with a care for reader-connection coherence. *shrug* I can do without continued sales pitches by writers who don't, though.

KeithD said:

Happily, there are quite enough writers here writing with a care for reader-connection coherence. *shrug* I can do without continued sales pitches by writers who don't, though.

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To be fair, I think there are some writers who genuinely do not understand that this coherence is lacking in what they write. The problem may be one of lack of self-awareness rather than obstinance. I'm not sure if one can force them to understand it, but I think it's worth trying to have a dialogue.

SimonDoom said:

If you are going to ask people to take time to respond to your writing, you should listen carefully to what they have to say and try to learn from them.

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Done and done. It's the least I or anyone else could or should do, and which I have already done. Just as I looked over electricblue66's writing back in February and yours (and others') this month when you've chipped in on this thread, and which I would hope anyone replying to my request for assistance would do with mine now. I appreciate that you went back and read a little of my chapter 1, and I'm glad to learn you found something worthwhile there in just that brief perusal. I actually think there's a lot more worthwhile there, just as there is in the rest of the book, just as there is in both of the other books I've posted (parts of) here already, just as more than 11,000 other readers here apparently have in just the past few months even when most of my chapters were posted to a category far from being this site's most popular. I wouldn't have shared them otherwise. I also appreciate any intent to be fair and constructive.

But.

SimonDoom said:

As just one example you didn't respond to: the word "It" to start the second sentence. It's a pronoun with no noun antecedent. What does "it" refer to? Nothing. Nobody knows what "it" refers to. I don't think you do.

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I didn't ask for assistance with the word "It" leading off the second of the two brief redacted sentences I posted here, just as I'm sure you wouldn't for the second of the two of your sentences that I just cited. Its reference is, in fact, quite obvious in context, as even a cursory reading of the original unredacted paragraph would reveal. Here's a(nother) link to it. It's the very first paragraph, so not much at all to read past. I strongly encourage you to do so rather than that this dead horse of aggrieved responses to a question I didn't ask continue to be flogged. I redacted the text irrelevant to the question I actually asked (about tense) because I felt it would obscure that question. Perhaps that was a mistake. It certainly seems to have caused a lot of digital ink (and time) to be unnecessarily spilled, and certainly considering that the question of tense has already been resolved to my satisfaction.

MetaBob said:

Done and done. It's

I didn't ask for assistance with the word "It" leading off the second of the two brief redacted sentences I posted here, just as I'm sure you wouldn't for the second of the two of your sentences that I just cited.

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You're wrong about that. Maybe I'm a bit of a masochist, but I always welcome others correcting me for mistakes in grammar, spelling, or punctuation. I'm not sure, however, what you are referring to.

I don't mean to get into a tit for tat. I wish you well with your stories.

SimonDoom said:

I always welcome others correcting me for mistakes in grammar, spelling, or punctuation. I'm not sure, however, what you are referring to.

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Well, considering I quoted exactly what you wrote, responded to it as soon as I could (less than 2 hours) after you wrote it, it's not like it's complicated. Here, I'll repeat the citation:

SimonDoom said:

As just one example you didn't respond to: the word "It" to start the second sentence. It's a pronoun with no noun antecedent. What does "it" refer to? Nothing. Nobody knows what "it" refers to. I don't think you do.

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There's no mistake in grammar, spelling, or punctuation. That (It) is the point, Simon. Though of course anyone who couldn't be bothered to read the paragraph they're criticizing so strenuously wouldn't know. Are people so ... to refuse to click a simple link to a different place on the same site that they're expressing such vociferous opinions about despite not having actually read what they're criticizing?

Here's yet another link to it, on this site if you want to actually witness what you and (what, 8, you say?) others should already know about where/how this has so misguidedly gone. It's the very first paragraph. It. Is. Fine. Despite all the seriously misguided criticism here. Of. It.

It's almost like a Monty Python sketch, except instead of people competing to summarize Marcel Proust, they're actually criticizing the summaries as if they were the original.

Apologies for the (awesome!) vlink, assuming it's relevant (or not) to you or any other of the wonderful people still reading (wading through) this.

MetaBob said:

Here's yet another link to it, on this site if you want to actually witness what you and (what, 8, you say?) others should already know about where/how this has so misguidedly gone. It's the very first paragraph. It. Is. Fine. Despite all the seriously misguided criticism here. Of. It.

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I read your first paragraph in its entirety. I think the penultimate sentence is clear, though it's taken a lot of readings to come clear. I understand the antecedent for "It" in the last sentence to be the act described in the penultimate sentence. However, after "It," I think I know what you're saying, but I'm piecing that together from what I think your intent is, not from what you say.

Tense is not a problem.

Edit: My heartiest thanks to MetaBob for pointing out the stray apostrophe which, if left in place, would have rendered my response completely undecipherable. My world is a better place now.

NotWise said:

I read your first paragraph in it's entirety.

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Dear NotWise, it's -> its

NotWise said:

I think the penultimate sentence is clear, though it's [ed: yes!] taken a lot of readings to come clear.

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I'll be happy to address the rest (and I'm sure there will be more) tomorrow. After dinner, and sleep.

MetaBob said:

Well, considering I quoted exactly what you wrote, responded to it as soon as I could (less than 2 hours) after you wrote it, it's not like it's complicated. Here, I'll repeat the citation:



There's no mistake in grammar, spelling, or punctuation. That (It) is the point, Simon. Though of course anyone who couldn't be bothered to read the paragraph they're criticizing so strenuously wouldn't know. Are people so ... to refuse to click a simple link to a different place on the same site that they're expressing such vociferous opinions about despite not having actually read what they're criticizing?

Here's yet another link to it, on this site if you want to actually witness what you and (what, 8, you say?) others should already know about where/how this has so misguidedly gone. It's the very first paragraph. It. Is. Fine. Despite all the seriously misguided criticism here. Of. It.

It's almost like a Monty Python sketch, except instead of people competing to summarize Marcel Proust, they're actually criticizing the summaries as if they were the original.

Apologies for the (awesome!) vlink, assuming it's relevant (or not) to you or any other of the wonderful people still reading (wading through) this.

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I hadn't intended to keep this going, but you raised the issue.

"It" is a pronoun. For it to make sense, it must have an antecedent -- a noun. One should be able to plug in a noun that you used before in your story to make sense of what "it" is. There is no such noun in this paragraph. The absence of an antecedent noun makes your use of the pronoun "it" vague and grammatically improper.

As a matter of basic grammar, it's not sufficient to say that "it" refers to a paragraph, or to a sentence, or to something happening in a previous sentence. That's not good grammar. Others, not just I, have told you this, and you don't want to listen. You still have not explained what "it" is. Any professional editor would tell you this. The use of "it" is bad grammar in this case unless it has an antecedent noun.

If you have a style guide or source that supports this usage, go ahead and cite it.

I've linked to a page that contains a useful discussion of the need for a clear antecedent for a pronoun: https://webapps.towson.edu/ows/proref.htm.

MetaBob said:

Dear NotWise, it's -> its

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Oh Gosh! Thanks. I've fixed it now, and I've even given you credit for the change.

See? I responded to unsolicited editorial input in a constructive fashion. You might be able to use that as a learning example.

NotWise said:

Oh Gosh! Thanks. I've fixed it now, and I've even given you credit for the change.

See? I responded to unsolicited editorial input in a constructive fashion. You might be able to use that as a learning example.

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Oh, I implicitly committed to responding to editorial input, solicited and not, even before I began this thread. I explicitly articulated that commitment when first challenged by SimonDoom on the matter, and had actually demonstrated exactly that even earlier: recall that when a couple commenters were confused by my inclusion of the word "four" when applied to 'other fingertips'; they thought the number should be different. They weren't actually correct, but it raised the question to me of why I included any number at all. So I removed it as unnecessary, and said so. Twice:

MetaBob said:

one of the changes I'll make due to feedback here will be to remove the word "four" from my sentence

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MetaBob said:

removing the extraneous word "four"

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See? I responded to unsolicited editorial input in a constructive fashion. You might be able to use that as a learning example.

Where we find ourselves now is one or more people sniping at one thing or another that I didn't ask about, often accompanied by insults or other denigrations, and often without actually reading the text in question. I'm sure you can understand that disconnect. I do thank you for actually taking a few recent moments to read the paragraph in question before contributing a specific comment. It should be obvious that this will help, pretty much every time.

Could my text be improved? Well, considering that the chapter in question, like the rest of the book, was first published more than a year ago and has undergone extensive editing ever since, up to and including last Friday when I submitted it here, yeah, the answer should be obvious. But, and this is a huge but, any change I make whether suggested by someone else or not, isn't going to satisfy all, and possibly not even the person who suggested a change in the first place. So I'm inevitably left with another piece of advice you dispensed on the matter, this time a good one:

NotWise said:

I think it writer's choice. Pick the one that works best for you.

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SimonDoom said:

"It" is a pronoun. For it to make sense, it must have an antecedent -- a noun. One should be able to plug in a noun that you used before in your story to make sense of what "it" is. There is no such noun in this paragraph. The absence of an antecedent noun makes your use of the pronoun "it" vague and grammatically improper.

... The use of "it" is bad grammar in this case unless it has an antecedent noun.

If you have a style guide or source that supports this usage, go ahead and cite it.

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Ah Simon, now you're either making stuff up or willfully ignoring such rules as there are in the English language. I took 10 minutes to leaf through some items on one of my bookshelves to find counterexamples, then opened my favorite English textbook to confirm. Here's what that textbook ("Trivium" from Wooden Books, again) unambiguously says in the third sentence of its section introducing pronouns:

"Pronouns can also be used to refer to people or things which have no antecedent in the text."

As with the zeugma you learned something about earlier in this thread, others know this far better than you seem to. Here's a sampling of the first words in a few of the novels on one of my bookshelves (side benefit: finding a Jelly Belly-filled plastic egg not found during our Easter Egg hunt), including this from the very first book I opened:

"It's freezing" - Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Høeg

Other examples:

"We have been" - The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
"We are going" - To The White Sea, James Dickey
"They were living" - The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
"He was an" - The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
"They were supposed" - The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler

Slightly different:

"Her doctor had" - Everything That Rises Must Converge, Flannery O’Connor

That's 7 examples by well-known, well-respected bestselling novelists using pronouns to begin the first sentence of their novel, which obviously precludes the requirement for the "antecedent noun" you say "it must have" or otherwise "is bad grammar." Whom should I believe? Hmmm?

Except.

Whether I used "It" as a pronoun seems ambiguous, doesn't it I? I certainly never said it was a pronoun even though that is its usual utility, that was all you. It actually referred to action or a preceding state of affairs. I obviously used "It" as a sentence subject, about the action occurring in the preceding sentence and the entire immediately preceding coordinate clause of that sentence whether that's clear or not to someone examining it through the lens of a grammarian:

It went on for a minute or two

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To my mind this is pretty unambiguous, and until a better alternative is suggested, either in my own mind or by someone else and as I have already demonstrated a willingness to do and actually demonstrated when appropriate, there is no good reason to change this just because some others say it is or isn't "bad grammar," right or wrong. This is as it should be, and as you should expect. As ever, I'm willing to listen. Except, as I've tried to do a couple times already, I would really prefer to quit this thread entirely, its purpose already accomplished.

Nothing I've ever done right
Happened on the safe side
It's the other way
Clone - Emily Haines

MetaBob said:

Oh, I implicitly committed to responding to editorial input, solicited and not, even before I began this thread. I explicitly articulated that commitment when first challenged by SimonDoom on the matter, and had actually demonstrated exactly that even earlier: recall that when a couple commenters were confused by my inclusion of the word "four" when applied to 'other fingertips'; they thought the number should be different. They weren't actually correct, but it raised the question to me of why I included any number at all. So I removed it as unnecessary, and said so. Twice:





See? I responded to unsolicited editorial input in a constructive fashion. You might be able to use that as a learning example.

Where we find ourselves now is one or more people sniping at one thing or another that I didn't ask about, often accompanied by insults or other denigrations, and often without actually reading the text in question. I'm sure you can understand that disconnect. I do thank you for actually taking a few recent moments to read the paragraph in question before contributing a specific comment. It should be obvious that this will help, pretty much every time.

Could my text be improved? Well, considering that the chapter in question, like the rest of the book, was first published more than a year ago and has undergone extensive editing ever since, up to and including last Friday when I submitted it here, yeah, the answer should be obvious. But, and this is a huge but, any change I make whether suggested by someone else or not, isn't going to satisfy all, and possibly not even the person who suggested a change in the first place. So I'm inevitably left with another piece of advice you dispensed on the matter, this time a good one:





Ah Simon, now you're either making stuff up or willfully ignoring such rules as there are in the English language. I took 10 minutes to leaf through some items on one of my bookshelves to find counterexamples, then opened my favorite English textbook to confirm. Here's what that textbook ("Trivium" from Wooden Books, again) unambiguously says in the third sentence of its section introducing pronouns:

"Pronouns can also be used to refer to people or things which have no antecedent in the text."

As with the zeugma you learned something about earlier in this thread, others know this far better than you seem to. Here's a sampling of the first words in a few of the novels on one of my bookshelves (side benefit: finding a Jelly Belly-filled plastic egg not found during our Easter Egg hunt), including this from the very first book I opened:

"It's freezing" - Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Høeg

Other examples:

"We have been" - The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
"We are going" - To The White Sea, James Dickey
"They were living" - The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
"He was an" - The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
"They were supposed" - The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler

Slightly different:

"Her doctor had" - Everything That Rises Must Converge, Flannery O’Connor

That's 7 examples by well-known, well-respected bestselling novelists using pronouns to begin the first sentence of their novel, which obviously precludes the requirement for the "antecedent noun" you say "it must have" or otherwise "is bad grammar." Whom should I believe? Hmmm?

Except.

Whether I used "It" as a pronoun seems ambiguous, doesn't it I? I certainly never said it was a pronoun even though that is its usual utility, that was all you. It actually referred to action or a preceding state of affairs. I obviously used "It" as a sentence subject, about the action occurring in the preceding sentence and the entire immediately preceding coordinate clause of that sentence whether that's clear or not to someone examining it through the lens of a grammarian:



To my mind this is pretty unambiguous, and until a better alternative is suggested, either in my own mind or by someone else and as I have already demonstrated a willingness to do and actually demonstrated when appropriate, there is no good reason to change this just because some others say it is or isn't "bad grammar," right or wrong. This is as it should be, and as you should expect. As ever, I'm willing to listen. Except, as I've tried to do a couple times already, I would really prefer to quit this thread entirely, its purpose already accomplished.

Nothing I've ever done right
Happened on the safe side
It's the other way
Clone - Emily Haines

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MetaBob,

We can agree to disagree.

I wish you good fortune in the writings to come.

SimonDoom said:

MetaBob,

We can agree to disagree.

I wish you good fortune in the writings to come.

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And to you, SimonDoom. And everyone else here, always.

I'm going to crack this thread open one more time, which I hope will not reopen any further floodgates, because a few minutes ago I revisited something I wrote here earlier and discovered it to be not fully correct: the meaning and usage of a word SimonDoom cited: antecedent.

I'm quite familiar with the uses of "antecedent" as a synonym for preceding and ancestor, and in mathematics, but when referring to pronouns or more generally anaphora or proforms, while an antecedent usually precedes that anaphor it isn't actually required to -- it can also follow (making it technically a postcedent) or be implied from general knowledge. Thus, my counterexample citing seven celebrated novels that begin with pronouns isn't fully valid.

This was news to me, and I thank you, SimonDoom, for pointing me in its general direction; I learned something valuable, something I'm always thankful for. I also apologize for stating that "now you're either making stuff up or willfully ignoring such rules as there are in the English language" even though I believe I was correct about everything else I wrote, including the reference that pronoun/proform antecedents are not actually required (for a variety of reasons).

That said, I still maintain that my use of the anaphor "It" as the first word of the second sentence in the paragraph I requested help on in this thread is perfectly valid: anaphora / proforms are not limited to a single-word antecedent, they can also be a phrase, clause, or even a full sentence. In my case, it's pretty clear that "It" referred to the immediately preceding coordinate clause. Some might disagree and of course are welcome to, because:

SimonDoom said:

We can agree to disagree.

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Regards,
-MɛtaBob