Punctuation

[Fellalady]

I've never really understood the laws governing punctuation. I generally tend to guess where to put a comma, anything beyond that I consider to be advanced grammer.

You can only blame an inadequate education for so longer and I think once you get to a certain age your supposed to fill in the gaps yourself.

Could someone offer a little advice?

[Monpot]

If you're really bothered you could try that book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

If you're not bothered then read the comedy version Eats, Shites, and Leaves.

[John Brainlove]

I'm not really one to talk about this.
...
See? Hmm... Smileadelic maybe? He seems like an intelligent and wordy young man. Durruti and Bamos are, like, actual writers who get paid - maybe they can help. And Creaky is a teacher.

I get mixed up between when to use a hyphen and when to use a semi-colon and stuff like that, but I tend to just go on instinct.

[Fellalady]

Yeah, cheers Monopot thou reeky folly-fallen flirt-gill.

I am really bothered, and have decided to buy myself a book on the subject.

[Tom-From-Sparks]

One thing that annoys me

The amount of punctuation used to reference somebody, it's so confusing.

[Monpot]

Fellalady said:

Yeah, cheers Monopot thou reeky folly-fallen flirt-gill.

Umm thanks.

Have to admit that I get annoyed when people use apostrophes in the wrong place.

[Fellalady]

I know what, you mean. ;D

[creakyknees]

Dost thou puking unwash'd pignuts

object to my liberal use of "....................."



I like punctuation, I'm not good at it but I like it.

[Monpot]

i just get annoyed by signs that use an apostrophe to imply plurality; "Million's of Bargain's!" is one I just made up as an example.

[Smileadelic]

The secret for commas is to read what you've written out loud. If there's a natural pause there then you probably need a comma. There's no particularly strict rules on this as far as I'm aware (other than with lists and so on). It's all to do with how it reads.

As for semicolons / hyphens, you should strictly use a semicolon where you could present your sentence as two separate ones. Hyphens I use for presenting clauses in a sentence that won't go properly "in sequence", if you get my drift.

Apostrophes are really easy. Only use them where you're abbreviating or showing possession. The possessive pronoun "its", however, doesn't need one - it's like "his" or "hers". Neither do pluarls, obviously.

[tafkac]

I read Eats Shoots and Leaves and thought it was the most self-indulgent, patronising wankfest ever. Punctuation, like grammar isn't really that important, except for people with OCD. People like to present it as some kind of value-free way of maintaining "correct" language use, but what does that mean? As long as people can understand, what's the problem? There is no point whatsoever in things like colons and semicolons. They do have prescribed uses, but as far as I can see, there are few or, no situations in which their absence would cause somebody to misinterpret the meaning of a sentence. Its all just institutionalised language snobbery.

[DangerousDoug]

we were walkin past a bar in the diff last night called Yates's


yes Yates's. and i had to point out very loudly and angrily that it bad grammar. it should be Yates'

and some strange woman turned around and said "you're sooooooo right!"

but appart from that i dont really give a shit about grammar and the like

[Wiggles]

tafkac said:

I read Eats Shoots and Leaves and thought it was the most self-indulgent, patronising wankfest ever. Punctuation, like grammar isn't really that important, except for people with OCD. People like to present it as some kind of value-free way of maintaining "correct" language use, but what does that mean? As long as people can understand, what's the problem? There is no point whatsoever in things like colons and semicolons. They do have prescribed uses, but as far as I can see, there are few or, no situations in which their absence would cause somebody to misinterpret the meaning of a sentence. Its all just institutionalised language snobbery.

Are you going condone rearranging all of the letters in words except the first and the last next?

[tafkac]

I clrateniy am. I hpoe ndooby has a pborlem wtih taht.

[Wiggles]

satynx is for cpumhs.