‘With full steam ahead into the Industrial Age.’
My mind is telling me no.
There’s no verb. So, no.
“Steam” can be a verb, Tempo Gain, but it would need a comma or semicolon after it for the sentence to work.
“With full steam; ahead into the industrial age.” Sounds good to me.
Guy
That doesn’t make sense. You still have no verb and your sentence is parsed awkwardly. If you are arguing that “steam” is a verb here, it would have to be “With full, steam,” which is incoherent. Replace it with any other verb and you’ll see why. “With full argue ahead into the industrial age.” That’s not to mention that the way you parsed it puts two prepositions next to each other, which is extremely strange.
I take this sentence to be: “With full steam ahead, [we go] into the industrial age.” It looks like it’s been turned into a headline or title by omitting some extraneous words, meaning no, it is not a complete sentence. As a title, I would personally remove the with to make it even briefer.
It doesn’t really matter that it can be a verb, does it? It’s clearly not functioning as one in this sentence.
“So, no.” has a capital letter and a full stop too, but I wouldn’t call it a “full sentence.” It depends on how you care to define that term.
Sounds good for the end of a chapter:
[quote]Over the months that followed, Barbara firmly grasped the reins of the small blacksmiths on the corner. Yet at the same time, there was a freshening wind gusting along the valley into the village, raking up the crisp leaves in the gutters. With full steam; ahead into the industrial age.
Chapter 3 : Hard as Nails
…[/quote]
At the same time as what? And blacksmith’s has an apostrophe. :snooty:
Anyway I agree. It’s not technically a sentence, but it might not matter. Depends how you want to use it.
Add a noun: Britain/Europe/London steamed into the industrial age.
Change it a little + it becomes good writing.
“With full steam; ahead into the industrial age” is a shortened version of “With full steam; ahead (we go)* into the industrial age.”
The ahead = ahead we go is understood due to context, just as the subject may be omitted in the imperative.
Another example: “Once more into the breach dear friends!” can be understood as “Once more into the breach (I go) dear friends!”
*Or similar S V option
Thanks for the replies. Full steam ahead is a fixed expression so couldn’t I put a comma after ahead? I’m thinking this could also be a full sentence…“With full steam ahead, (we went) into the Industrial Age.” I agree it really needs a subject.
Is this something you’re trying to proofread or edit? No, it’s not a full sentence, in that there’s no verb. (Remember that a subject isn’t absolutely necessary. For example, consider either of these parenthetical sentences.) But is it a “lexical unit” that makes sense? Yup. I guess it’s something like an adverbial phrase, although I’m unsure of the exact terminology. “Onwards science progressed, with full steam ahead into the Industrial age.” A comma could be placed after either “steam” or “ahead”, leading to slightly different emphasis, but I don’t think either is necessary.
I don’t think it’s unusual for more literary language to separate final modifying phrases like that with periods rather than commas. “Rain fell upon the battlefield. A cold, dark rain.” I assume a grammar-check program would highlight that as an error, but in the right context, it’s certainly “correct” language.
I mentor a German who teaches English in Bavaria. They emailed me earlier asking a series of questions and that sentence stumped me and so I thought I would get some other opinions.
OK. I think it’s more a matter of definition: no, it’s not a complete sentence, because sentences are basically defined (for non-linguists) as a unit built around a verb. But that doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. (Is “No” a sentence?)
EDIT: Unsurprisingly, a quick Google search reveals it’s a lot more complicated than that. Some Wikipedia links:
Pro-Sentence: for example, “No”.
Sentence word
Sentence: note the early example, of the first few “sentences” of Bleak House, pretty much fit what you’re describing here.
Nosing around a bit I’ve come across some descriptions of “elliptical sentences,” which would cover such constructions.
In the Us at least we do not say “WITH full steam ahead”. If it were just “Full steam ahead into the industrial age!” it is technically a fragment, but could stand alone as an interjection. Adding " with" makes it an adverbial phrase ( ignoring the question of whether the preposition is the correct one or not; for me “at” would be correct, not “with”).
To my uneducated ear, you could use either “With full steam” or “Full steam ahead”, but not “with full steam ahead”. Just seems wrong.
To hell with such a rule!
The interesting bit is this: Is there a non-verbal construction that counts as a sentence (one that is performative, or one that expresses a proposition), is it an elliptical sentence, or is ‘with’ a verb?
‘With’ has no precedent being a verb, and we can’t conjugate it here or elsewhere, so that pretty much rules it out.
The former has some grounding, since the language is rife with such cases, and it’s constructive:
[ol]
[li]Down with taxes![/li]
[li]Off with his head![/li]
[li]Down the wretched galley and into the empty brig with you![/li][/ol]
It’s just an imperative sentence construction that doesn’t use a verb phrase.
What reliable ellipsis covers these (and most other) cases? If there is one, then I’ll side with the second option, but I don’t see where it would lie, and there are limits to what linguists reasonably allow as ellipses.
I think the sentence is half full.