The Importance of Correct Punctuation

[Desdichado]

Indeed, I was argumentative. But there was no need for my cheap shot Han-to-C-3PO remark, for which I tender apology.

There's always a need for an attempt at a cheap joke. Star Wars analogies are good. My specialty is vaguely disturbing and uncomfortable metaphors that make people around me avert their eyes, change the subject, or look for a way to talk to someone else.

 

[Bront]

I found this in an article I read.

News Scientist notes the following warning on a bottle of eye drops: "Do not use this product if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, narrow angle glaucoma or trouble urinating unless directed by a physician."

I sure hope there's a missing comma.

 

[Hellefire]

Yes, both ways are technicaly correct. It is generally 'better' to avoid being vague, unless you mean to allude to a double meaning. On that note, this sign was posted in my home town when they transplanted some ducks into the local lagoon:


Please Don't Molest the Ducks.


We laughed about that a lot. Of course, I was 16 at the time too.

Aaron

 

[Welverin]

Irregardless is not a word.

Of course it is. People use it, it has meaning, and a distinct sound, thus it is a word.

Stop using it. You sound like an idiot.

But that doesn't stop this from being true.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I found this in an article I read.
Originally Posted by Chicago Sun Times
News Scientist notes the following warning on a bottle of eye drops: "Do not use this product if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, narrow angle glaucoma or trouble urinating unless directed by a physician."
I sure hope there's a missing comma.

Sorry, there's not. This sentence is properly puctuated, though, to improve clarity, it might be reworked entirely:

"Unless directed by a physician, do not use this product if you have heart disease, high blood pressure, narrow angle glaucoma or trouble urinating."

 

[Pielorinho]

I've always been one who said you don't need that last comma (after all you say "Peanut Butter and Jelly" but not "Peanut Butter, and Jelly").

But I think you just made a convert.

For lunch today, I fixed us some sandwiches: egg salad, turkey and cheese, ham and peanut butter and jelly.

Just to buttress your faith .

Grammar and punctuation are not comparable to biology. While I agree that the single-space-post-period is becoming the norm, and while I agree that there may be good reasons for this, there's no hard-and-fast nature to the rule, no objective reality reflected by the rule.

If I tell someone that earthworms have spinal columns, I'm either correct or I'm incorrect: my opinion on the subject is meaningless, irrelevant. But if I tell someone that a single space follows a period, my opinion on the subject is one of the many opinions on the subject that collectively comprise the truth of the statement.

Daniel

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

With English, opinions matter.

French has an authority, the Academy, to arbitrate what is proper or improper French.

In English, we have conventions from editors, authors, grammarians, and from everyday speakers. We all get an opinion, and there are more than a few ways to have your opinion be the "right" one, the one with which everyone else agrees:

1) Agree with the opinion of one or more of the published authorities on the subject.

2) Get someone else to mark you as an expert grammarian. (This is normally done by consistently using strategy number 1 for an extended period of time.)

3) Be loud, pushy, rude and critical of those who disagree with you. Try to call their opinions ignorant.

4) Cook up a psuedo-linguistic rationalization for your error. (This one is more common than you might think.)

5) Convince your friends and neighbors to adopt your "innovation." (e.g. new verb: to conversate; from conversation; from converse)

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

First, I'd like to thank God, for coming down and letting me know that way I was taught to type in class is completely wrong and I'm obviously an idiot for following an archiac way of typing. I also appreciate his offer of smiting those instructors who instruct me to use two spaces after the punctuation known as a period, if I am merely to give him thier email.

Now to met pet peeve regarding punctuation and spelling...

People who haunt internet boards in order to harp on people's grammar and spelling and punctuation and syntax mystaykes in order to feel superior.

Why?

Because there's better stuff they can do, and watching the same dog do the same trick eventually gets boring and then irrtating and then you want to have it put to sleep.

It's arrogance in the extreme.

And since we're harping about nitpicky stuff like this, here's my biggest pet peeve as it responds, in a way, to this thread.

Capitolizationatariumism.

What makes this sentence acceptable on enworld.

Let's help Jack off his horse.

Thanks, I'll be here all week, try the veal.

 

[niolo]

I must agree with Abstractions points. Writers generally don't know printing conventions and they really don't need to know them. As a former proofer, designer, and production artist I've had to clean up text to prepare for print; which included removing extra spaces after periods. We also inserted the comma prior to the "and" in sequences, that being the method we chose for clarity.

Additionally, much of our grammar conventions ARE products of opinion which have become codified over the years. Why is a prepostion not supposed to begin a sentence, because someone deconstructed the word "pre" "position" to mean that it must come before another word. Not so. There are many instances of these in our language since English borrows a great deal from many other languages (try constructing a sentence comprised of only Anglo/Saxon words). History and opinion are buried in our words and grammar conventions.

 

[Abstraction]

An opinion is something everybody has, everybody is entitled to, and can be anything. Grammar is a convention, which means that a large group all agree to do something the same way in order to proceed with less confusion. It may be your opinion to follow a period with four commas, but that is certainly not the convention.

Can we please be civil? This thread was started (not by me) as a way to simply vent a few grammar pet peeves. I do not recall anyone here running out and editing other peoples' posts as grammar police.

I am trying to stay out of this now. Why it has become so nasty, I don't know.