Punctuation (Page 1 of 12)

Or: A woman without; her man is nothing.
Take care. Vern

Sometimes, the pause function for punctuation applies.

Two questions run together or one question:
What that in the road ahead?
What's that in the road, ahead. [No]
What's that in the road? A head? [Maybe]

Commas for the purpose of dangling a word or phrase at  the end of a sentence should be avoided, or just do not use those phrases, especially participles, at the end of sentence.

He stopped realizing he had already won the race.
He stopped, realizing he had already won the race.

To express the second properly should be either A woman: without her, a man is nothing; or Woman: without her, Man is nothing. Both do not conform to what was said and meant as expressed in the first version that never required the bracketing commas. The proper answer for the professor is: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

It's just a simple joke to illustrate punctuation is important.

I'm thinking you and I came away from that article with two completely different views. And that's okay. Bottom line of this thread: correct punctuation is important.

PTL, somebody gets the point -- and it wasn't her, lol. Take care. Vern

I know that punctuation can be used to alter context and change meaning. I gave you my a head example where like your Grandma example, the often abused use of the comma for a pause is important.

I gather this imaginary English Professor for this fictional classroom is a Journalism instructor who will teach the usefulness of the punctuation of the ellipsis, too.

Zimmerman: "This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about."
911 Dispatcher: "OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic?"
Zimmerman: He looks black.

                         -to-

Zimmerman:  "He looks like he’s up to no good ... he looks black.”

I'm a big fan of grammarians and punctuationists who understand they are archivists. When creative writers change communication to make it more efficient and more accessible to readers who don't know what is in the archives, I admire grammarians and punctuationists who update their archives to keep up with the times.

I like these kind of folks: http://www.killtheapostrophe.com/
An excerpt:
WHY KILL THE APOSTROPHE?

First, apostrophes are redundant. The number of cases where they make a semantic difference is absolutely minuscule (see below).

Second, they are wasteful. Tremendous amounts of money are spent every year by businesses on proof readers, part of whose job is to put apostrophes in the 'correct' place - to no semantic effect whatsoever. And the rest of us sit there clicking thru with Microsofts grammar checker, trying to work out if its telling us the truth or not about whether we really need an apostrophe there.

Third, they are just one more tool of snobbery. People who imagine that nonstandard apostrophe usage represents a 'falling of standards' tend also to assume that means they can look down on 'illiterate' people who dont follow the rules. You know, illiterate people like Shakespeares editors.

Fourth, current technology (text messaging in particular) makes it time consuming to use them. Why give ourselves this stress when itll make no difference anyway?

Fifth, they actually impede communication and understanding. Since so many people these days arent certain about how apostrophes work semantically its hardly going to help even if a proof-reader puts them all in the 'correct' places in some text.

Sixth, they are a distraction for otherwise reasonable and intelligent people. If youre the kind of person who does know and care about the 'correct' usage of apostrophes, think how much time you waste fretting over examples of 'misuse' when the very fact that you spotted the error means that you knew what they were trying to say in the first place. Are you a teacher who has marked a student down for apostrophe misuse? Shame on you, if so, for prioritising form over content.

Memphis Trace

My two cents on ellipses versus em-dash? The ellipses imply a pause, or a trailing off. They create a gentler break. The em-dash implies a sudden change in tone or subject.

"Iceberg... dead ahead!"

"Iceberg -- dead ahead!"

You can tie two clauses together with a good em-dash, to imply the same sudden break:

"A woman without -- her man is nothing!"

highly archaic, so any efficiency gained made by leaving out words is lost by lack of understanding by vast numbers of English speakers. Also, again ordinarily, the two parts of a semicolon sentence require connection, and a woman being outside and a man being nothing has a weird, unfathomable connection.

Punctuate this so that it makes sense:

That that is is that that is not is not.

There is no such thing as "proper English." There is standard written English, there is stuffy academic English, there is "no one can even focus on what you're saying because your placement of prepositions is so distracting" English, & there are a great many spoken variants upon standard written English which communicate quite beautifully to their listeners. All of which can be captured artistically with a clever finagling of letters and punctuation, and all of which are "proper."

You mention the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition somewhere above. That, sir, is archaic. Rules change as language matures. In standard written English? Yes, the preposition thing is still discouraged in academic circles -- but in many dialects within spoken English, to tuck the preposition deep within the sentence sounds silly and pompous. I think it's on its way out of standard written English, too.