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Q&A Is the sentence "Love not self - love no one" easily understandable to an English reader?

From a structure point of view, you're making it far too short to be easily understandable by a reader. “Love not self - love no one” It sounds more like a commandment to live by rather than ...

posted 5y ago by Liquid‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T11:56:49Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41316
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T10:36:08Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41316
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T10:36:08Z (over 4 years ago)
From a structure point of view, you're making it far too short to be easily understandable by a reader.

> “Love not self - love no one”

It sounds more like a commandment to live by rather than a causal implication. The fact that verbs are in their root forms makes the sentence look like an imperative statement: there will be people that, without any given context, will read said words as: _"You shouldn't love yourself, nor love anyone else"_

Depending on the context it could also feel like someone criticizing someone else: "_You don't love yourself, you don't love at all"._

Of course a part of the readers will (eventually) derive the intended meaning of "If you don't love yourself, you can't love anyone". But you're omitting a lot of the important bits of the sentence.

So:

## Yes, it sounds unnatural.

You should focus on making it less synthetical to improve readability.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-01-15T10:56:12Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 10