Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Paula T. on January 4, 2012 at 9:38pm

I'm a real stickler for proper punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc.  That's after 2 years of typing class in high school and just finishing 8 years of university work!  Whether I'm chatting, typing in a forum, or an email, I follow the 'rules' and proof read everything  lol

So, yes, misspellings do make me crazy.  Also, when people don't know when to use its or it's; and there, their, or they're.  The acronyms annoy me, too, although I am guilty of using LOL  or lol  :P  

The problem creeps into students school work.  I'm a librarian in a university research library and have logged hours and hours on the reference desk.  I am asked reference questions, but am also asked about how to properly cite books and articles.  I cringe when I look at many of the students papers.  So totally off the appropriate format, lousy spelling, and punctuation.  I have to quickly walk away or I will sit down and edit their paper.

Permalink Reply by Roswatheist on January 4, 2012 at 9:47pm

Ha! What drives me batshit crazy is when you see signs-professional signs, mind you, with apostrophes when none are needed. "Hot water heater", "over exaggerate", and others just about kill me.

I'm a real stickler, too, though for different reasons. I was raised in deep west Texas, but speak like a news anchor because I was raised by an aunt who cared about how I would be perceived when I grew up.

Permalink Reply by Grinning Cat on February 27, 2013 at 12:40am

Aren't apostrophes supposed to signal, "Beware of oncoming 's'"? :-)

Permalink Reply by Natalie A Sera on February 27, 2013 at 10:30am

Wish there was a "like" button! :-)

Permalink Reply by Loren Miller on January 4, 2012 at 9:51pm

I used to write for a living in addition to my field service work, including writing or co-writing six maintenance manuals, and that gave me a VERY critical slant on the whole issue of writing, period.  I will use the occasional ROFL or BTW here and there, but generally, I write here the way I write, with a few exceptions.  If I'm talking casually, I might throw in a "y'all" or drop a "G" to sound a touch more conversational with friends, but for the large part, I prefer to be fully understood.  For that, spelling and punctuation are de rigeur (and it's nice that Firefox has its own spell-checker!).

Permalink Reply by Patricia on January 4, 2012 at 9:54pm

I'm not highly educated, but I hate all the shortcuts for words & never use the texting spelling either. 

Permalink Reply by Roswatheist on January 4, 2012 at 9:57pm

I feel terrible for what the poor English teachers must have to deal with.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on March 24, 2013 at 4:23am

Yeah, Roswatheist, there are some people teaching poor English. They have a special animus for "it's" and "its".

Note the closing punctuation above. English folk do it sensibly; they put full stops (our periods) outside embedded quoted terms.

Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on March 24, 2013 at 11:57am

I emphatically agree that the British rule makes more sense than ours which would be to put the period inside the "quoted text."  Which would make sense ONLY if the period is part of what's being quoted.

For that matter, when you embed a quoted sentence inside another sentence, you are expected to change the period to a comma, e.g.:  Tom said "Note the closing punctuation above," in his previous post.  Makes no sense, and I have no idea whether that rule is the same in the UK or not.

Unfortunately your full stop rule, sensible as it is, is not the rule people are expected to live by in the United States, and that's not just in school.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on March 25, 2013 at 1:04am

Steve, sometimes I pretend I grew up in Europe where people do a few things in more sensible ways than Americans, one more if you add a little-known practice in parliamentary law that has the English buying at a low price and selling at a high price. The reversal is attributed to Thomas Jefferson; we "buy high and sell low", because he wanted to show the English parliament that America could function without them and he wrote the rule that way in his parliamentary manual. Yeah, buy high, sell low, and file for bankruptcy.

That bit of exotica aside, when you cut food on your dinner plate, do you have the fork in your left hand and the knife in your right hand and then, to eat, move the fork to your right hand?

It's rule-compliant but ergonomically wasteful to do so. Instead, do as some Europeans do: keep the fork in your left hand and as you bring the food to your mouth keep the tines pointed downward.

Computer people may have been the first to complain of the "period inside the quote" anomaly when we designed software to tell very fast but very dumb computers how to process text.

If we want to deal with European views of American attitudes toward sex, we can write some sharply-pointed satire about our denial of it and obsession with it.

Permalink Reply by Natalie A Sera on March 25, 2013 at 2:28pm

Yup, I eat European style, (learned it in Israel), and use chopsticks when appropriate too. The trick with chopsticks is to hold the rice bowl over your plate, and then keep it under your food until you actually put it in your mouth. That way, if you drop it, it will just go on the rice, and not on the table or on your clothes. And when you eat the rice, you shovel it in your mouth by putting the bowl into your lips, just like you do when drinking.

As far as punctuation, I MUCH prefer the British style to ours. It's just more sensible. Spelling, on the other hand, is not so sensible -- are they still using gaol for jail? I'd personally like a much more phonetic based spelling system (there ARE phonetic rules in ours, but not sufficient), but we English speakers tend to be resistant to change. Unlike the Spanish speakers, who readily adopted beisbol for our national sport. Or the Japanese and Koreans, who, when borrowing words, adapt them to an already completely phonetic system. Which didn't start out that way, but was dictated to them by smart people! (Am I implying that we're dumb????)

Permalink Reply by SteveInCO on March 25, 2013 at 7:29pm

[Note:  I don't know why this thing is hyper-indenting.  I even tried a paste as text, then going through and adding formatting.]

Steve, sometimes I pretend I grew up in Europe where people do a few things in more sensible ways than Americans, one more if you add a little-known practice in parliamentary law that has the English buying at a low price and selling at a high price. The reversal is attributed to Thomas Jefferson; we "buy high and sell low", because he wanted to show the English parliament that America could function without them and he wrote the rule that way in his parliamentary manual. Yeah, buy high, sell low, and file for bankruptcy.

I originally figured you were American but that's by default; most people on these fora are, and I will assume such until I see Britishisms (or some odd grammar or diction) in their writing--of course they may just outright say so too. Anyhow, I have no idea what you mean by the latter, legislatures don't buy and sell things. Is this some sort of metaphor I am not catching on to?

That bit of exotica aside, when you cut food on your dinner plate, do you have the fork in your left hand and the knife in your right hand and then, to eat, move the fork to your right hand?

I use my left hand to operate the knife and the right hand to operate the fork, eating or cutting. I'm somewhat ambidextrous. Actually it's more accurate to state I am ambiclumsy.

It's rule-compliant but ergonomically wasteful to do so. Instead, do as some Europeans do: keep the fork in your left hand and as you bring the food to your mouth keep the tines pointed downward.

That's the most obvious difference between Euro and Yank table manners, the downward tines.

Computer people may have been the first to complain of the "period inside the quote" anomaly when we designed software to tell very fast but very dumb computers how to process text.

Well we use quotes to delimit a string, so we find it odd if not annoying to have external crap put into the string.

If we want to deal with European views of American attitudes toward sex, we can write some sharply-pointed satire about our denial of it and obsession with it.

Not sure why that would be germane here but would be a decent topic on its own.

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