Talk:Birds in Chinese mythology

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Dcattell in topic Confusion about possible comma placement

Editorial comments moved from article to Talk edit

I'm not sure why parenthetical referencing is so difficult for some people to understand/accept. Dcattell (talk) 16:09, 14 November 2018 (UTC)Reply

Confusion about possible comma placement edit

I write this concerning the following sentence:

"The Jingwei is a mythical bird which tries to fill up the ocean with twigs and pebbles symbolizing indefatigable determination."

Could anyone please tell me if there should be a comma after "pebbles"? I'm not entirely certain if "symbolizes indefatigable determination" refers to "twigs and pebbles", or the act of trying to fill the ocean with them. (Edit: I lean toward the latter, though. I intended to write that when I first added this section, but forgot, sorry.)--Thylacine24 (talk) 01:16, 20 May 2020 (UTC)Reply

The ocean is the regular ocean of salt water. The Jingwei bird is determinedly attempting to fill it up with solid stuff with the intent that there be no more drownings. The "indefatigable determination" of the bird is shown in that the ocean is huge and each beak or claw full of little sticks or rocks dropped into the ocean makes a perhaps unnoticeable difference to the project of filling the whole ocean. Yet it keeps on trying. Dcattell (talk) 01:31, 20 May 2020 (UTC)Reply
(I would suggest re-writing the sentence, perhaps breaking it into two parts, rather that just dealing with the comma) Dcattell (talk) 01:40, 20 May 2020 (UTC)Reply