Just as we're going
to continue with our Punctuation and
Professionalism segments from the first course, we're also going to continue with our Notes on
Nuance segments. Here are links to the
nuance moves we covered in that first course for anyone
who wants a quick review. The move we'll focus on now
is actually three moves, each involving the word "if." Sometimes that "if" will come at the beginning of a sentence, like in this excerpt from Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by the Italian theoretical
physicist, Carlo Rovelli. "If [Max] Planck is the
father of the theory, [Albert] Einstein is the
parent who nurtured it." Sometimes that "if" will come
in the middle of a sentence. The Autobiography of a Face
by the Irish American poet, Lucy Grealy, has a good example. "They treated me respectfully, if somewhat distantly,
though there was a clique of boys who
always called me names." And sometimes that "if" will be
paired with the word "not," as it is here in an
essay on Bitcoin in the London Review of Books by the English writer,
John Lanchester. "Just as the Civil
War was the prompt for the United States
to end private money, and the crises of
Kenyan democracy led to the explosive
growth of M-Pesa, the global financial crisis seems to have been
a crucial spur, if not to the
development of bitcoin, then certainly to the
timing of its launch." The readings will help
distinguish each of these uses of "if" and also will show
how one of them, "if not," shares a lot in common with one of our
previous moves, "almost." The more you can start to see the connections and
differences between moves, the better you'll be at
picking the right one.