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From: Snidely <snidely.too@gmail.com>
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On Wednesday, Aidan Kehoe queried:
>  Ar an chéad lá de mí Bealtaine, scríobh Antonio Marques: 
>
>>>>>> Never mind that in the bit that Steve quoted to flippantly inquire on
>>>>>> what 'that' meant, it was quite explicitly said 'dither'.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The "it" there isn't idiomatic  
>>>> The sentence sounded wrong to me, but even now I'm not sure why.
>>>> As to 'it', maybe it's not idiomatic, but is it ungrammatical? I don't
>>>> quite see it.
>>> 
>>> "It" refers to "dither",
>> 
>> No, it's an impersonal passive, and I've just found out that for the last
>> 30/40 years I may have been using a construct that english doesn't have.
>
> English does have an impersonal passive, and and what you wrote is 
> grammatical, but again, not idiomatic. No one would have noticed or commented 
> except that the sentence was posted to alt.usage.english. For me this 
> formulating it so:
>
>   “Never mind that the bit, that Steve quoted to flippantly inquire on what
>   ‘that’ meant, explicitly said ‘dither’”
>
> reads a little more idiomatic. 

I don't like the commas, despite the length of the phrase identifying 
the bit.

/dps

-- 
You could try being nicer and politer
> instead, and see how that works out.
     -- Katy Jennison