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What I get out of this conversation is that you don't like Woolf because she uses commas correctly

you don't like "A woman without; her man is nothing" because it uses a semi-colon incorrectly,

Joyce was playing a game with the reader in the mechanics of language.  Most of us do not have that luxury; any games we play must stand on rock-solid mechanics.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Other than possibly leant, what do you suppose that I think needs deciphering?

A great many things, but I was referring to this:

your example inserts from nowhere a whole panoply of external information to decypher

That does make make standard English, whose existence you deny, disappear from everyone else's universe.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Cite and quote any such like "the woman is without" after the 18th century in which without  is an adverb. Okay, I'll give you one from Dickens: "Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag..."  and we can guess together just how many good readers will not pause to think that actually does not mean the poor guy had no door behind which to stand. It is weird to any good reader and unfathomable to the barely literate --- today's average college student --- and your example inserts from nowhere a whole panoply of external information to decypher "The woman is without, and her man is nothing."

You harp about a passage that needs deciphering, then quote a passage by James Joyce? There's a hole in the bucket, sir.

"I leant against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking."

"There was much sense in your smile: it was very shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to say—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’"

A fairly popular novel, read ravenously today by barely literate college students.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

a Twitter moron, has suggested that English spelling reform means "later" as "l8r" and is so much a matter of not wasting time imprinting those extra two characters in proper English. That is what I mean by a suggestion which is absolutely fu*king ludicrous.

c u l8r   -- I've heard these SMS abbreviations referred to as Punk'tuation

Dill Carver wrote:

How would you punctuate this?

A long sentence from Virginia Woolf. ….

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…

I can’t get past the first few lines.

I suffer a form of dyslexia (a single term for a broad set of conditions).  My daughter has a more chronic form of the condition and can’t read very well but is very obviously intelligent. It held her back at school until she was eleven years old and an enlightened teacher gave her a purple tinted film overlay to read through. Reading through this placed upon her page she immediately caught fire and as incredible as it sounds, purple film overlay in-hand she read the Harry Potter series of books in four weeks flat (after stumbling over the first volume for months) and consumed the school library to become one of the top three literary students in her school by age sixteen.  But that’s another story.

I can’t get past the first few lines… in truth, the first line. (and not for the want of trying)

‘Considering how common illness is how tremendous the spiritual change that….

Blows my train off its tracks.

Whilst…

‘Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that….

Is crystal. My world is back and the right way up.

Judging by the other responses, and once we are agreed that the rules of formal writing don’t apply, it is clear that within creative writing, punctuation is a matter of subjective choice.

A poet would punctuate this piece with line breaks and without first letter capitalisation to show it as one contiguous passage.

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

I need to ‘poem’ it in order to find, for me, where the punctuation should be placed.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Moreover, one can discern just how archaic, though not obsolete, an English word is by trying to find the equivalent in another language. French, German, Spanish, Russian all translate without as an English adverb the same only as the English word outside but the English preposition exactly as their own : sin la puerta; sans la porte; ohne die Tür --- there being no adverb that is not literally outside in their typical dictionaries. Draußen vor der Tür by Dürrenmatt, for example, cannot be translated as Without the Door which can only be translated into German as Ohne der Tür, not what Dürrenmatt meant.

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.

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

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

Memphis Trace wrote:

First, apostrophes are redundant.

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

Third, they are just one more tool of snobbery.

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.

[1] - [5] ludicrous argument for anything given always by bad spellers. Maybe you are joking about all this?

[6] The apostrophe for contractions is like the abbreviation for a full name and thus a tacit acknowledgement there are real words behind: F.B.I, of course, means Female Body Inspector. Going down the slippery slope to youre from you're goes on down to ur with no trace of proper English and the beginnings of an argument of why have proper English anyway.

Adjectivizing the arguments to ban the apostrophe with your pejorative ludicrous serves your argument to retain them, how?

"Proper" English is ever advancing as a tool for efficient communication. Make your case against the arguments presented by the "Ban the Apostrophe" folks. Labeling their arguments ludicrous and then talking about a slippery slope makes you look stodgy and foolish.

Two or three years ago, I read a book (On Agate Hill by Lee Smith) in which she used no apostrophes in the narrative POV of a bright, young woman who was being taught to write.

First, apostrophes are redundant.

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

Third, they are just one more tool of snobbery.

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.

However, we have to be careful about cutting words that are actually needed. Certain words change the meaning of a sentence, so if you take them out, you can confuse the readers and given an incorrect picture of the events. If a character says to another, "Sit." it is rude, as if he(she) is treating another person like a dog. We do not talk to other people that way. (

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

vern wrote:

Or: A woman without; her man is nothing.

Ordinarily the two parts of semicolon phrasing can stand alone, and the above fails. The first half ends in a preposition, has no verb, and does not make sense.

Unless she is outside of the building looking for her imaginary Teutonic boyfriend?