Does the compound sentence reveal the full sequence of reasoning?
A compounding in this sentence causes its writer to say something he did not mean to say. The error occurred because he failed to declare the full sequence of his reasoning: If I walk away from them they’ll think I’m a wimp, but if I stay with them I know they’ll get caught. (This is a defective sentence.) There is a successful compounding of the first two part-sentences: `If I walk away from them [then] they’ll think I’m a wimp’. In the second compounding `but if’ is appropriately used only if the writer meant to claim that his staying with `them’ will be the cause of their being caught. But he did not mean to claim this. Rather, he meant to say that it is inevitable that `they’ll get caught’, and that he will be caught with them if he stays. Had he been aware that the first premise of his sequence of reasoning is `They are bound to be caught’, he would have been better placed to word his last part-sentence soundly: [They are bound to be caught.] If I walk away from them [then] they’l
