On Punctuation Abuse.
O.K, so halomouse started it all, but now begun, I feel I may as well have a tiny rant, just to update my long overdue LJ.
Punctuation.
Use it people.
It constitutes one half of our language (no, not numerically, but in EXPRESSION).
When I sit down with you in the pub to have a beer, as I very much like to do, no matter who you are, I can hear your voice. No matter how noisy the pub I can actually hear it, with my ears. This in turn aids my understanding of the meaning of what you are trying to convey. In fact, in a very noisy pub, it is your expressiveness that often carries the meaning when the actual words are lost in white noise, bad music, and beer.
Just think about the multiple meanings of so many words in our glorious language. A language that has more words in it than any other ever in the history of speech, and so the most potent tool for communication of ideas between one mind and another. And yet there are words that we use, often with no variation in spelling, to mean a vast number of different things.
Expression is essential.
Punctuation is our only means, in written form, of conveying expression.
Ergo, punctuation is essential.
Right, now I am just going to highlight what are, in my humble opinion, several of the main offences committed by the average writer, out of ignorance, laziness, or ineptitude.
The apostrophe.
'
That's him. He has two uses, that I know of. 1/ for the possessive form of a noun, 2/ to flag abbreviated words.
That's all fairly straight forward, and most people get it mostly right. They chuck a ' into the right spot in "don't" to flag the missing "o", and one into "smokedamage's", to indicate that they are talking about something that smokedamage owns.
Where the trouble comes in, is with the humble little word, "it".
"It" can be abbreviated, from "it is" to "it's". It can also, of course, own things. However, the proper possessive version of "it" is "its": note the lack of apostrophe. Yes, this is correct. Look it up in a dictionary. First few pages often has a grammar and punctuation rules.
I guess it was decided to make "it" the exception (and it is the only one) to this rule, because it would be too hard to distinguish the possessive from the abbreviated. Of course that doesn't help all us pedants who want to also be able to distinguish between something that belongs to "it" and a multiple number of "its". However, as when you are pointing to a multitude of "its", you generally say "they", I guess it makes some sense. (And haven't we all pointed at a huge pile of "its" SOOO OFTEN?)
Number 2.
The semi-colon.
So many people use it to simply separate two branches of thought within a sentence, wanting them both to be considered as part of the one idea. This however, is wrong. For your elucidation, the semi-colon (;) is used to distinguish two opposing ideas, while the colon (:) two related ones. Again, I refer you to the dictionary.
I give this little lecture, because I myself was a serial offender of both these two rules, only a year ago. Having learnt the error of my ways, I have endeavored to correct them, and if I have to, Goddamnit, then so should everybody else!
Punctuation.
Use it people.
It constitutes one half of our language (no, not numerically, but in EXPRESSION).
When I sit down with you in the pub to have a beer, as I very much like to do, no matter who you are, I can hear your voice. No matter how noisy the pub I can actually hear it, with my ears. This in turn aids my understanding of the meaning of what you are trying to convey. In fact, in a very noisy pub, it is your expressiveness that often carries the meaning when the actual words are lost in white noise, bad music, and beer.
Just think about the multiple meanings of so many words in our glorious language. A language that has more words in it than any other ever in the history of speech, and so the most potent tool for communication of ideas between one mind and another. And yet there are words that we use, often with no variation in spelling, to mean a vast number of different things.
Expression is essential.
Punctuation is our only means, in written form, of conveying expression.
Ergo, punctuation is essential.
Right, now I am just going to highlight what are, in my humble opinion, several of the main offences committed by the average writer, out of ignorance, laziness, or ineptitude.
The apostrophe.
'
That's him. He has two uses, that I know of. 1/ for the possessive form of a noun, 2/ to flag abbreviated words.
That's all fairly straight forward, and most people get it mostly right. They chuck a ' into the right spot in "don't" to flag the missing "o", and one into "smokedamage's", to indicate that they are talking about something that smokedamage owns.
Where the trouble comes in, is with the humble little word, "it".
"It" can be abbreviated, from "it is" to "it's". It can also, of course, own things. However, the proper possessive version of "it" is "its": note the lack of apostrophe. Yes, this is correct. Look it up in a dictionary. First few pages often has a grammar and punctuation rules.
I guess it was decided to make "it" the exception (and it is the only one) to this rule, because it would be too hard to distinguish the possessive from the abbreviated. Of course that doesn't help all us pedants who want to also be able to distinguish between something that belongs to "it" and a multiple number of "its". However, as when you are pointing to a multitude of "its", you generally say "they", I guess it makes some sense. (And haven't we all pointed at a huge pile of "its" SOOO OFTEN?)
Number 2.
The semi-colon.
So many people use it to simply separate two branches of thought within a sentence, wanting them both to be considered as part of the one idea. This however, is wrong. For your elucidation, the semi-colon (;) is used to distinguish two opposing ideas, while the colon (:) two related ones. Again, I refer you to the dictionary.
I give this little lecture, because I myself was a serial offender of both these two rules, only a year ago. Having learnt the error of my ways, I have endeavored to correct them, and if I have to, Goddamnit, then so should everybody else!