[OT, grammar and punctuation] Use of commas in US and British style?

[Caedrel]

Colons

I like colons (as you have noticed) Apart from being aneat waste removal system, I think they add greater clarity to the statement.

I would like to thank: my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
I would like to thank my parents: God and Ayn Rand.

This is also a place I'd use the ampersand, indicating that they were paired:
I would like to thank my parents, God & Ayn Rand.

Consistency in grammar is important in a d20 product - inconsistent use is an indication of poor editing, which reflects poorly (although perhaps unjustifiably) on the content. Although I think spelling is more important in this regard.

Can someone give me a sample sentence of ebonics? And a translation into English to go with it? (OK, I'm too lazy to go off and do a web search of my own - but please? )

English has an advantage over Chinese in that it has an alphabet rather than a pictorial language that requires rote memorisation of the meaning (I could never stand my Chinese classes - brrr!). Although isn't there an alphabetic version of Mandarin now? Using English letters?

 

[hong]

Re: Colons

I would like to thank: my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
I would like to thank my parents: God and Ayn Rand.

This is also a place I'd use the ampersand, indicating that they were paired:
I would like to thank my parents, God & Ayn Rand.

[flamebait]

I've always thought that people who actually want to thank their parents, God and Ayn Rand, often do think that their parents are God and Ayn Rand.

[/flamebait]


Hong "not a Libertinarian" Ooi

 

[Tiefling]

You are kdding, right? I've never seen anyone do that, but if I did, I'd probably spew my drink all over the keyboard and remain giggling incoherently for the rest of the day...

Oh yeah. In fact, I (and someone else whose name I don't recall) got into an argument on this very board over this with a guy who insisted that not only is "for all intensive purposes" the right way to say it, but that his english teacher said so too.

Pielorinho: The only possible way for "I could care less" to make sense by itself is indeed for it to be sarcastic. But when one says something sarcastically, one says something that might actually be said (even if it sounds silly). "I went to the pub to get a bear cake," for instance. But can you actually imagine someone saying, in all seriousness, "I could care less," in order to express that they cared? I certainly can't.

To address the original issue, I use commas in whatever way makes the most sense in a given case. In a list, if there's no ambiguity that neccessitates a comma I leave it out before the last item.

 

[tarchon]

Re: Colons

English has an advantage over Chinese in that it has an alphabet rather than a pictorial language that requires rote memorisation of the meaning (I could never stand my Chinese classes - brrr!). Although isn't there an alphabetic version of Mandarin now? Using English letters?

It's really not that different. In English, it's necessary to learn the pronunciation of every word, or at least every root, separately since the mapping between letter and sound is so inconsistent. The spelling takes you in the right direction, but it doesn't give you everything. There's a school of thought in education - somewhat controversial - called "whole language " that deemphasizes the importance of the phonetic cues, partly for this reason.
In Chinese though, there often actually is a significant amount of information about the pronunciation encoded in the components of the glyph (called radicals). It's not much compared to most alphabetic scripts, but it is useful as a reminder, which is really all the English spelling is good for anyway. Other component radicals often give some hint as to the meaning as well. On a rough scale, English may be, say, 70% alphabetic and 30% logographic, while Chinese is 10/90, but it's not all vs. none.
A very good example is the character for xing1 (star) of which the top component is the semantically related ri4 (sun) and the bottom component is the phonetically similar sheng1 (birth). Xing4 (surname) similarly contains xin1 (heart) on the left as a rather rough semantic indicator and sheng1 on the right to suggest the pronunciation (http://zhongwen.com/s/v343.htm).
With the xing homophones, there's even a fairly strong correlation between the phonetic indicator and the tone. Several patterns for the glyph composition hold frequently enough to be useful.

 

[Pielorinho]

Re: Colons

I like colons (as you have noticed) Apart from being aneat waste removal system, I think they add greater clarity to the statement.

I would like to thank: my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
I would like to thank my parents: God and Ayn Rand.

Actually, your first example is nonstandard: a colon should only follow an independent clause. Because "thank" is a transitive verb, the clause requires a direct object. Absent the direct object, you don't have an independent clause, and the colon is misplaced.

Now I'll say it in non-grammarspeak:

A colon is correctly placed only after a bunch of words that could constitute a sentence. It says, "And now let me elaborate." If you place it after a bunch of words that couldn't constitute a sentence by themselves, you've misplaced it.

"Thank," as a verb, requires a direct object: you need to be thanking someone (or something). Since the first example doesn't thank anyone (or anything) before the colon, the colon is misplaced.

You could change the sentence to read, "I would like to thank four entities: my parents, God and that megalomaniacal nincompoop Ayn Rand." You'd then be correct, grammatically and factually.

Daniel

PS Does this invalidate everything I've been arguing so far?

 

[Tiefling]

I've always been bugged by

their - there
then - than
to - too
looser - loser
your - you're

and similar things. Can't say I've seen anyone spell "voila" as "wala" before. I don't seem to mind things like ATM Machine. I DO mind things like

should of
and nu-ku-lar

But you know what really bugs me? More than anything else? Arabic words and names spoken by Americans.

Guys, Iraq does not sound like i-rack. It's i-rock. And I am bloody SICK of hearing al-Qaeda pronounced "al-ki-da" or "al-kay-da." Honestly. If we truly want to foster a mutually respectful and beneficial relationship with Arabic-speaking countries, it might help to but the smallest, token amount of energy into trying to pronounce their words and names correctly.

 

[MJ4H]

Verbing weirds the language.

 

[Morrus]

I hope I'm not sounding too stupid here but, uh... what are "Ebonics"?

 

[Tiefling]

I believe it's a strong English dialect spoken by some African-Americans and related in grammar to some-African-language-or-other.

 

[Maerdwyn]

really bugs me? More than anything else? Arabic words and names spoken by Americans.

To be fair, Tiefling, Arabic pronunciation varies widely among Arabic speakers (While no Arabic speaker would pronounce Iraq as "eye-rack", "al-Qaeda" would be pronounced quite differently depending on the region). Also, the problem of transliteration of Arabic pretty much guarantees incorrent pronunciation of its words by those who don't know the language. English has only one "t", one "d", one "s". It has no "ayn", "ghayn", or "hamza". The "qaff", though transliterated as "q", makes a very different sound than does and English "q".

Of course, the problem is not limited to English and Arabic - Any language has trouble dealing with words or names ofrom a different language. Look at five different word maps from five different countries, and see how each names places in other countries, for example.

"Nukuler" grates on my ears a lot more than does "eye-rack," because "nuclear" is part of a native English speaker's vocabulary, and can be accurately rendered in English. "Iraq" cannot be accurately rendered using English.