Another gem by wordsmith Elle Cordova!
“I’m essential”
“You’re vestigial”
#Punctuation marks hanging out!
c: @ElleCordova on IG
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Another gem by wordsmith Elle Cordova!
“I’m essential”
“You’re vestigial”
#Punctuation marks hanging out!
c: @ElleCordova on IG
Our writer long avoided exclamation points. Then, the pandemic hit and the lively punctuation became a signal flare in a cold, gray sea. Now he loves their zing! Their fizz! Their pop! #punctuation #grammar
Posted into Commentary @commentary-csmonitor
The Christian Science Monitor · You punctuation party animal, you! How I learned to love the exclamation mark.
Grammarly: we miss you! Did you take a writing break?
me: it's not you, it's my new IT department won't allow #Grammarly and Microsoft Editor sucks donkey balls; I guess having proper #spelling, grammar and #punctuation in our product #documentation isn't a priority here at InniTrobe.
'Punctuation controls two things: logical separation and breath… Writers weigh each role differently.'
Matthew Zipf on Renata Adler's commas:
https://theamericanscholar.org/in-the-matter-of-the-commas
#books #reading #writing #fiction #punctuation #commas #bookstodon @bookstodon
The American Scholar · In the Matter of the Commas - The American ScholarFor the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music
Continued thread
And Michael Tomasello's book "Origins of Human Communication" has a sentence 261 words long that's more intelligible than many sentences one tenth its length.
Clarity hinges on structure and sense, and his line uses 11 semicolons – here, the right choice – to form a precisely executed parallelism.
Continued thread
There are exceptions. Halfway through Patrick deWitt's first novel "Ablutions" is a sentence 207 words long that made me want to stand and cheer.
Not to be all leave-it-to-the-pros, but you do need to have certain skills to attempt a sentence of such length and hope to keep readers firmly on track.
Sometimes four short sentences are better than a single 140-word behemoth built with creaky semicolons and sticky tape.
Punctuation: It matters!
Those quotation marks really don't "help."
![sign at a grocery story that says: ring bell for "meat service" [sic]](https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/110/454/334/885/782/original/e4beb7767fe26c72.jpg "sign at a grocery story that says: ring bell for \"meat service\" [sic]")
***The King's English by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler**
_“Read now or download for (free!)”_
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75439
#Read #Download #Nonfiction #Book #Ebook #Bookstodon #English #Language #Grammar #Vocabulary #Syntax #Punctuation #Linguistics #ProjectGutenberg @linguistics @bookstodon
Project GutenbergThe King's English by H. W. Fowler and F. G. FowlerFree kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.
Style guides and standardisation have beaten out any creativity in punctuation. The near eradication of the multi-purposed ellipsis has been one of its greatest losses.
https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/in-praise-of-the-ellipsis/
Engelsberg ideasIn praise of the ellipsisStyle guides and standardisation have beaten out any creativity in punctuation. The near eradication of the multi-purposed ellipsis has been one of its greatest losses.
While the Supreme Court’s politics have veered right, the court’s language has gotten surprisingly progressive. Justices now use contractions, casual language, and personal pronouns to make their opinions more accessible to the public. https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-is-unabashedly-liberal-in-its-writing-style-245503 #grammar #scotus #punctuation
The ConversationUS Supreme Court is unabashedly liberal − in its writing styleWhile the Court’s politics have veered right over the past decade, the justices’ prose has shifted left, becoming more colloquial and accessible.
Here’s a fun little riddle to test your punctuation knowledge in Hebrew. What is the answer in Hebrew to this riddle:
I’m the smallest member of the writing world,
But I can stop you in your tracks.
Without me, sentences would just run on and on!
What am I?
Drop your guesses below and let’s see who gets it right!
Journalists need to stop beginning sentences with "Yet, ..." Undergrads do it, okay, fine. You're supposed to have learned something since then.
Replied in thread
> How is that "rude"?
My wife just ran into someone who claimed that using punctuation in a text was rude and aggressive - yes, for real. It seems half of everyone under 30 these days is so sensitive that "snowflake" doesn't even begin to cover it...
rude (adjective): presented in a manner which does not cater to your every whim and preference, or which paints you in anything but the most positive light
> "They were so aggressive in their text!"
< "Why, what'd they do?"
> "They used an ellipsis!"
Real conversation. I'm looking around for Alan Funt. I can't even imagine their reaction if it had been an octothorpe. [1]
#aggressive #punctuation #trigger #ellipsis #octothorpe #ampersand #hyphen #caret #parentheses #brackets #braces #asterisk
[1] Why yes, Firefox spellchecker, when I typed "octothorpe" I clearly really meant to type "#clotheshorse".
Maybe I should respond to Currys pointing out the spelling and punctuation errors in their poster.
Currys are a large electrical retailer in the UK.
Dear people:
Fucking learn to fucking capitalize your fucking abbreviations. It is really, seriously not that hard, even on mobile.
Some writers profess to love semicolons, but if they're using them in place of colons then it's not true love
New rule. If a parenthetical comment ends a sentence, the ( is closed by either ) or a full stop, whichever comes first (because I regularly forget to type the closing parenthesis in this situation.