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corra is a sparkling mind, it's true.

But your two cents is a very worthy contribution. The subject is lengthy but the discussion is open and very enlightening. If nothing else it makes us pay attention upon how we are punctuating prose within our own work, whereas we might have been lapse or non-attentive (I know I was). I always seem to present reviewers with a harsh task in terms of punctuation correction when they look at my work.

A stirring monologue.

That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others ... But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

Sorry Janet, it wasn't serious... as I mentioned, a cheap nonsensical vehicle£ to post my 'bad grammar, bad grandma' play on words is all.

A cheap nonsensical vehicle£ to post my 'bad grammar, bad grandma' play on words is all.

Although, seriously (a genuine enquiry); I've recently been working in a regional extremity of England (South-West) where the dialect or common use of the language has some subtle differences. One mannerism that prevails amongst the locals is the tendency to end a sentence with a re-affirmation (If you’ve seen any of the Harry Potter movies, Hagrid, the large fellow with the beard plays the part with this accent).

They'll say things like:

"It's a nice day today -- it is."
or
"We were thinking of going down the pub -- we were."
or
"You'll regret that in the morning -- you will."

or one I heard this morning:

That's not right that isn't.

Within my own writing I'm always looking for dialogue traits or manners of speech that might add more character or dimension to the dialogue, but by using proper words (used differently) within mannerisms and ‘turn of phrase’ rather than spelling out the accent phonetically.

So, what is the 'correct' or best way to punctuate this reiteration dialect?

That’s not right that isn’t.

That’s not right— that isn’t.

That’s not right, that isn’t.

That’s not right; that isn’t.

The truth is, I don't know.

The fact is that the cell-phone with the numeric key and the underlying trio of Alpha characters as a text messaging device is all but dead. The small capacity character limit for SMS messages has gone too. These were the primary drivers for the abbreviation/acronym phenomena.

I'm sure some tweeters will decide to abbreviate whilst using a QWERTY keyboard; they might countermand the auto-replace and auto-pre-emptive text and auto spell check features to allow the code strings, but punkuation has become a minority style choice rather than a practice of habit driven by operational necessity upon the handheld media devices of the masses.

What I do know for a fact is that the people I witnessed doing it, are doing it less or no longer. They don't need to.  Also, within the Twitter feeds that I follow, these abbreviation codes are quite rare. People tend to use actual words. You might get the odd 'LOL' or 'WTF' but for the most part, I think they want their 128 words to be legible and have meaning and impact. You don't get that when you publish the esoteric character strings that people (judgemental as we are) tend to associate with adolescent, uncouth, ill educated and vulgar culture.

As far as I'm aware, Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than a private chatter system.  If you are going to give the world the benefit of your worded wisdom are you really going to interleave your prose with the likes of 'FCO' 'INUCOSM' '2moro'  '2nite' '@TEOTD'  'gratz'
LOL!

The good news is that it looks to be a passing fad. It harks from the initial SMS text messaging arrangement from a cell-phone where the numeric keypad doubled up as alpha keys. Press the number 4 key once for 4, twice for the letter G, three times for the letter H and four presses for the letter I. Similarly the number 6 key is pressed once for 6, twice for M, thrice for N and four time for O... and so on.

Users (especially the young) rapidly became very proficient at typing with both thumbs flashing simultaneously. Naturally that font of resourcefulness, the human mind, looked for shortcuts to this labour in the form of abbreviations. It was an era when text messages cost a fee to send, phone memory buffers were small and long message would need to sent in several sections. Again abbreviation was desirable in order to compress the message into a single 'text' and therefore minimise the fee.

I was split. Whilst I found the bastardisation of the language and the disregard for grammar quite offensive I was amazed at the mind/eye/thumb dexterity of my kids and found myself grudgingly admiring the inventiveness and resourcefulness of these acronym/abbreviation codes.

However, enter the 'Smartphone' and 'tablets' with their large display and QWERTY touch-screen keys and the pre-emptive/predictive text systems (the words are spelled out in full, automatically spell-checked and punctuation is automatically added by the system). With most of the new systems if you type 'l8r' into the phone, an automatic conversion is applied and the word 'later' will appear in the text document.  For the most part, text messaging is either cheaper or 'free' or up to limit included within a contract. Also the size of message is much less an issue with larger sized text massages allowed by the carriers and the phone memory buffers. Nowadays my children often dictate a message to their phone and the voice recognition system creates the (punctuated and spell-checked) text message for them.         

This has led to the Punkuation phenomena fading away. Like morse-code or semaphore, people simply don't need to do it anymore. Some remnants will remain as nostalgia for those who used it, but the actual necessity or incentives to abbreviate have disappeared and thus the drivers for its use.

Added: Oh, and the advent instant video messaging on mobile phones, the likes of Skype and Facetime further diminish the old ways of SMS texting.

Probably needs punctuating properly

Hi Charles,

I hope my comment ‘A long sentence from Virginia Woolf. She is notorious for them.’ wasn’t interpreted as a criticism upon the author or her style? 

The comment is open to interpretation but I was actually issuing a tongue-in-cheek  if reticent jibe towards those of whom you speak.

As members of the previous version of this site are aware, I am the long-term student admirer of the literary long sentence, and an advocate of that art form.

As for Woolf, I have recently been steered there by a mentor and am finding the fare quite delicious. It was as a result of such that I came across the sentence in question. To be honest it fascinated me and I’m extremely pleased to be able to discuss it here. I can’t get this kind of interaction anywhere else that I know of and I think this is a great forum and a wonderful discussion.   

The long literary sentence by way of accidental lack of punctuation or complete disregard for basic grammar peened by an aspirational amateur writer, is common detritus within novice manuscripts and is the type of long sentence instances that are commonly criticised. Anyone criticizing Woolf will need to get past corra and should be prepared to be savaged and rightly so!

Outside of the context of any other discussion being conducted here, and stealing a very well coined phase....

This passage is chicken soup for the readers soul. Wonderful.

The English language is derived from a hybrid of Ancient Briton, a mix of Celtic based languages, Latin and the mixed languages of the legions and their trade followers after the Roman invasion. Germanic from the Saxons who came later; Norse dialects from the Danes and the Scandinavian Vikings. French from the Norman invasion after which for centuries the national language of England was the French spoken by the nobility, Latin by the church and blend of all that went before by the common populace. Add to this the influences from a far-flung empire and then export the package  to the other side of the earth, Australia, New Zealand or to North America, already influenced by Spanish and French and this along with immigrants and slaves from all around the globe into a land with its own native languages.

Along the way the English language has evolved into what it is without objective rationalisation or standardisation.   

Where there is little or no exterior influence or interference to a civilization or culture you end up with a simple language like Pawnee.

The flexibility and versatility, the variety complexity and idiosyncrasies of the stew that is the English language is beloved of poets, lyricists and writers because it brings with it the rhyme and a plethora of meanings inferences and interpretations.  It loans itself to the nuance, hyperbole, the intentional mixed meanings of the double entendre and a huge, fat thesaurus full of synonyms with doorstep sized dictionaries.

These are our tools and as writers in English, we have an advantage.

This morning my young teenage son invited me to "Frack off." Grinning from ear to ear from the supposed immunity the innocence of his wordplay afforded him. His confidence was misplaced.

How would you punctuate this?

A long sentence from Virginia Woolf. She is notorious for them. Okay, we can use a Google search to reach the original; but without reference to her published version, where would you place the punctuation here? Would you retain it as one long sentence?

Considering how common illness is how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings how astonishing when the lights of health go down the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness how we go down into the pit of death and feel the water of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm chair and confuse his Rinse the Mouth rinse the mouth with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us when we think of this as we are frequently forced to think of it it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature

Those Angela Ackerman books, The Emotion Thesaurus; The Negative Trait Thesaurus; The Positive Trait Thesaurus, look very interesting. Thanks for this article.