Anorak Forums » Backlash

1. Randie-By-Name
   Member

   Alrighty students, an interesting little difference of opinion has arisen late in Thursday's earliest MM thread and its all about where to put commas and stuff.

   Because I honestly don't want to shoot what is essentially a very serious thread all to hell by getting involved in a skirmish over punctuation, I thought I'd post here cos its a bit late at night and UK insomniacs and time zone differentials might like to have a go too and maybe with all of us putting our heads together we could at least sort out the sentence.

   Still with me so far? K, this is where the situation basically stood at last glance (although a later poster did mention that "Passing Through" may still be a little off the mark):

   ++++++
   862
   Passing Through Says:

   April 18th, 2008 at 12:55 am
   VQ

   “Did you miss school the day punctuation was taught?”

   Actually it’s,” Did you miss school, the day punctuation was taught?” you know, main clause and subordinate clause ….comma between….or you could just ignore all that ….like me!

   Nite !

   +++++++

   I'm gonna be very brave, go for broke and suggest that we chuck everything out and phrase the question thus:

   "Were you in attendance at school the day punctuation was taught?"

   Me personally, I'm sure I was there because when they were going through all that stuff, I was too young to know about skipping classes. However, there's every probability that I wasn't paying attention cos often the more I look at a sentence, the more little squiggles I want to bung into it to make the sentence read better but which apparently should be left out entirely unless there's a rule to bung one in. Please note: I'm on best behaviour for the moment and they've been left out completely in my suggestion above and in as much of this as possible.

   The only time grammar, sentence structure and verb conjugations have ever been an issue was when I was learning languages and had to conjugate verbs into something like the past pluperfect subjunctive or something sinister like that so I'm in no way an expert. If anyone else would like to have a try I'd love to hear any and all suggestions.

   Posted 1 year ago #

2. Anonymous
   Unregistered

   Bloody hell, Randie.

   Why do you have to ask such difficult questions?

   I'm still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes here so don't expect any sensible answers from me. (Should I have put a comma in the last sentence?)

   Never could get to grips with all these funny tenses at school. My English/Latin teacher tried to drum it in to me, but eventually gave up. I now stick commas into sentences in a purely 'instinctive' way.

   Now, commas, I kinda understand, separate clauses and all that, but split infinitives, when to use a colon rather than a semi-colon, when to use 'which' rather than 'that', and other grammatical niceties? No idea. My own unique answer to the question of when to use commas, or colons, and semi-colons? When in doubt - use a hyphen.

   P.S. What some posters forget when criticising the writing style of others in Opinions is that, for some, English is not their mother tongue.

   P.P.S. While we're on the subject of correct punctuation, you might find the following article of interest ....

   http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=143432&in_page_id=2

   Posted 1 year ago #

3. Anonymous
   Unregistered

   Bloody hell Randie, you could have put it in, in fact, you should have put it in.

   Posted 1 year ago #

4. Mic
   Member

   Important stuff, punctuation. See below:-

   Version 1

   Dear Jon:

   I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy -- will you let me be yours?

   Gloria

   Version 2

   Dear Jon:

   I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?

   Yours,

   Gloria

   Posted 1 year ago #

5. Anonymous
   Unregistered

   Eats shoots and leaves

   Posted 1 year ago #

6. 2pot
   Member

   that woman made a bloody fortune out of that book.

   us aussie chicks used to say that our men were like wombats - "eats roots shoots and leaves"

   in this instance, a "root" is....errrr penster? like to elabourate?

   Posted 1 year ago #

7. chenier
   Member

   Law firms get shirty about commas.

   That's why you always have to cite them as Sue, Grabbit and Run...

   Posted 1 year ago #

8. Randie-By-Name
   Member

   Maybe Mic's point about punctuation is a really good one - leave out everything, write what you need to, see how well it's received, if the reader doesn't like it, read it for them with pauses where appropriate and convince em you meant it all nicely in the first place. However, for some reason my curiosity about commas has gone out the window because now I'm on tenterhooks waiting to hear what "root" is all about.

   Duncan the way I see it hyphens are our friends and brackets (correctly termed "parentheses" but I can't spell those as easily) are our buddies. Your p.s. about English not being the first language of some posters is well made and I have to tell you (and them if any may be reading this) that I'm totally impressed with how well many of them get their point of view across to English-as-mother-tonguers (yay!!!!!! for hyphens)(hallelujah for brackets) without bunging in a graphic showing a middle finger.

   June, you're reminding me of someone and I can't quite think whom/who/whose/what. At the moment my mind is a-tangle with what I should be putting where and whether if I said only what was was necessary, would I end up with a sentence that read something like "A drink would be nice".

   Posted 1 year ago #

9. Randie-By-Name
   Member

   Chenier, the first lawyer I worked for was a corporate geezer and when I started transcribing his stuff I'd take a pause to mean comma a longer pause to mean full stop and bung inverted commas if I thought he was doing that quote thing in the air with his fingers. I didn't do that for very long. It was a happy thing that WordProcessors were here to stay forever though. I'd still be retyping reams of paper if I'd been working at an old Remington. Gives me shivers just thinking about it.

   Not a comma in sight in that paragraph and its nearly 12 noon here so I think I give myself a reward.

   Posted 1 year ago #

10. Anonymous
    Unregistered

    Always been curious why you chose to post using ....

    Randie-by-name

    as opposed to ....

    Randie, by name.

    Posted 1 year ago #

11. Anonymous
    Unregistered

    Isn't that randy?

    Posted 1 year ago #

12. Anonymous
    Unregistered

    Bloody hell!

    Grammar was bad enough. Now we're bringing spelling into it!

    Posted 1 year ago #

13. Torri
    Member

    I learned purfect punctuation and grammer when I took my admin course, then fergot it all.

    Posted 1 year ago #

14. Anonymous
    Unregistered

    Randie

    Congratulations!!!!

    You made it to the front page of Anorak - see 'Anorak School of Grammar' in 'Twitterings'

    Posted 1 year ago #

15. Randie-By-Name
    Member

    It was a slow news day, huh?

    About my hyphens? I couldn't put spaces between the nic when we had to re-register from the old, old format and I didn't think of cramming it all together till it was too late.

    Howzat for a short explanation?

    Posted 1 year ago #

16. penster
    Member

    Why thankyou for handballing that over to me 2pot. As you know, slang and crudity form a decent chunk of my venacular.

    A root, or the double kangaroo scissor kick is also known as bed boogie, horizontal folkdancing, creating a beast with 2 backs etc.

    Once in Canada, I suggested that a Canadian ski instructor invite a female Aussie to have a "root in the dunny", explaining that it was a mixed drink to which she was partial. She slapped him over the face and he had no idea why.

    Posted 1 year ago #

17. Mic
    Member

    You git Penster! It would have been worth the air fare to Canada just to witness that.

    Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'root vegetables'. I'll view courgettes with the utmost suspicion from now on.

    Posted 1 year ago #

18. penster
    Member

    Aussies love it when Americans proclaim with gusto that they are "rooting" for their team - WAGS take that literally.

    Root beer is an oxymoron. I reckon that ski instructor felt like a right oxymoron.

    Posted 1 year ago #

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