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Why can people not use punctuation?!?!?!

Question

First Post
This is driving me crazy.....the amount of people refusing to put quotes around speech is staggering. Yet they are the same people who insist on using color or bold for speech.......
 

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Bront

The man with the probe
If you're using coloring, you shouldn't need "", though it helps.

That being said, asking about proper punctuation with the title of this thread is fairly ironic.
 

Hussar

Legend
I find it funnier that someone would complain about punctuation with poor grammar. :)

Sorry, my inner English teacher coming out. :p

Really, though, what's wrong with the quote box? I like the quote box. And, if you're quoting anything longer than about two lines, it's actually proper to USE the quote box in writing.
 


glass

(he, him)
Question said:
This is driving me crazy.....the amount of people refusing to put quotes around speech is staggering. Yet they are the same people who insist on using color or bold for speech.......
This is driving me crazy...why do people put multiple exclamation marks or question marks (or both) at the end of sentances...and why can people never get the right number of dots in an elipsis.... :p


glass.
 

Plane Sailing

Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
"Why can people not use punctuation?"

An interesting philosophical question. I would say that the reason that people can 'not' use punctuation is that we live in a world were freedom of choice to punctuate as one wishes is enshrined in our culture. It certainly isn't a crime, and nobody will come to take us away if we decide to not use punctuation.

(if you haven't read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" you might want to give it a try - a very funny take on the ills of punctuation problems).

You might be thinking of the question "Why don't people use punctuation", which might be a more productive line of enquiry, and there are several reasons why people don't. Amongst many possibilities, the first ones off the top of my head are

a) people for whom english isn't their first language.
b) people typing quickly and making mistakes
c) like emails, forum posting is done more like talking than writing, and people often follow the implicit grammar rules of conversation more closely than explicit grammar rules of writing. Electronic communication in this form is more ephemeral (or at least appears to be) and so a more casual style is often used.
d) in online forums colour is often used to differentiate different 'voices' in a conversation, and it can handle that more easily than plain quote marks.

Cheers
 

Plane Sailing

Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
glass said:
This is driving me crazy...why do people put multiple exclamation marks or question marks (or both) at the end of sentances...and why can people never get the right number of dots in an elipsis.... :p

I don't know if your last ellipsis is meant to be ironic or not, but you know that there are three dots and not four, right...

:)
 

Bront

The man with the probe
Hussar said:
I find it funnier that someone would complain about punctuation with poor grammar. :)

Sorry, my inner English teacher coming out. :p

Really, though, what's wrong with the quote box? I like the quote box. And, if you're quoting anything longer than about two lines, it's actually proper to USE the quote box in writing.
I think she(he?) is complaining about them in PbP.
 

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