One of the Worst Periods of my Life

[Watis]

You are correct that both interpretations of MrFoolish's comment are valid. So then I wondered why I hadn't noticed the dichotomy myself when I first read it.

It's the question mark, making the sentence a question: "why can't you post your blog entries here?",

Without it, the sentence becomes a command: "don't post your blog entries here".

As this is a common form of sentence construction I wondered why it's not been a problem before. A moment's thought made me realise that we're missing the cadence of the sentence when it is spoken - which reveals the speaker's intent.

Watis

Thanks for a thought provoking post Watis.

It seems to me that with a full stop the sentence becomes a command to stop posting, and with a question mark either interpretation may be correct.

As regards the cadence in the spoken conversation, that would depend on the intonation in the voice and bodily and facial cues and possibly a myriad of other things, pheromones etc.

Yes, except that, for me, the question mark removed the possibility of the sentence being interpreted as a command to stop posting. However, on revisiting the sentence, I can now see how that interpretation can still be made.

Watis

[WickedLester]

Yes, I was encouraging you to post your tales here on Lemonfool. I can see my wording was ambiguous.

It wasn't your wording that was ambiguous, your post just made me think about your intentions from the first sentence. When I read the whole paragraph, from the second sentence onwards it seems that there was enough affirmation that you did want me to post my thoughts here. In my opinion that sentence could only have caused me to have the wrong impression if I had a conviction that you already disliked me from previous discussions and I wasn't open minded enough to at least read the rest of it, despite you making your point fairly clearly and concisely.

I did notice a slight ambiguity later in the paragraph.

I thought it was quite well written and I was mildly intrigued, but let's be honest, there's a lot of content out there.

I could read this sentence two ways. Firstly that I have put too much content in too short a piece, secondly that you wouldn't bother to visit my blog because it's a bit average and you have many similar ones to choose from.

[stewamax]

Moderator Message:
Please remember the purpose of this board is to listen and support.

I trust that support in the sense of 'tough love' is also allowed.

Otherwise mea culpa. In a different thread that described at voluminous length that OP's problems in supporting his somewhat demanding mother, I suggested that he tried putting himself in the place of his mother and think of her non-trivial predicament rather than his own.
And I commented that OP may well find this view unfeeling. Which he - unsurprisingly - did.

I was (and am) unapologetic but hope that this type of support, when genuinely tendered, is acceptable.