To the darling slaves of psycho-babble .
Hello
I have decided to write a general message , as many of my answers dovetail into this one .
It would be unreasonable of me to expect you to read everything written by Shakespeare . It is totally reasonable of me to ask you to read Don Quijote de La Mancha however ( 1605 for the first part , 1615 for the second part ). The English translation is easily available , and for the true ignoramii , do not forget that the author is Cervantes . This book will help you to explore the idea of madness and sanity . There is no better book on the subject . And you are not told what to think . You are free to think .
Read great literature instead of immersing yourself in the self-indulgent psycho-babble peddled by quacks .
And never forget that there will never be any answers , ever .
Thankfully, Don Quixote uses punctuation properly (in both languages.)
Buddug, are you some sort of preacher from the Church of Holier Than Thou Intellectualism or something?
No . Just someone who wants our common humanity to belong to people and literature , and not to soulless jargon .
A troll by any name would stink as foul;
In this case clear he doth protest too much.
10 years ago we invented the limerick flame. Now it's -- the Iambic Pentameter Flame! Witness its horrible penetrating burn:
His mother's bed is open to the lot,
and to the lot her parts most wretched lie,
the sight of which would leave them gasping puke
but ne'er-the-less the parts in which they'd try
to poke their horrid manroots deep inside.
And nine months hence the boy would poke his head
from deep within those very parts himself;
and past the puke his shoulder doth appear
its filth already calling out its name.
"Buddug", it whimpered; thus it shall be known.
No . Just someone who wants our common humanity to belong to people and literature , and not to soulless jargon .
Judgemental much, are we?
I assume you've a list of soulful jargon handy? Or will you just be posting hoity toity titles which your notion of Illumination decrees are requisite for the unwashed masses?
By the way...who you callin' people, there, bud?
Troll, idiot, whatever. Just stop putting a space before your periods, please.
What is wrong with reading Shakespeare... I have read it all, performed a great deal of it. Most of it is very shitty relationship advice.
FYI.
Oh, come on...what about Romeo and Juliet? That wasn't so...oh, wait a minute.
Okay, Lady MacBeth. She was good egg. Oh, no...wait a sec.
I think Will might have been a bit of bipolar case.
Sorry about this digression , but LabRat told me to stop leaving a 'space before my periods'. I thought it was some sort of misogynistic remark to do with menstruation , but I think he is talking about what I call full stops .
Never thought about that before . Curious . It must be because I learnt to write before learning how to use a keyboard . When you write , you leave a little gap between the last letter of the sentence and the full stop . Well , that is how I was taught .
Without a space , it seems too breathy and close , rather like an American talking to you . Americans always talk too close to their interlocutor . They invade your space . I know that they do not mean to be rude and invasive , it is just their way .
Please go back to the discussion , and thank you LabRat for the orthographic epiphany :heart-on:
Were you paying attention, Buddug, you'd know that LabRat is a female. That's okay, the educated aren't required to be observant.
Sincere apologies to LabRat , and thank you for pointing her sex out to me , Elspode .
ifwealltypedlikewewroteallmypostswouldlookkindalikethis,causeiwritereallysloppilyandwithoutspacesorcapitalization,forthemostpart.grammar hasrulesandeverythingevenifyoudontalwayswriteexactlyaccordingtothoserules.
The word is psychobabble. You should see a doctor about having your hypen removed.
Buddig, I think what you mean is that there are no answers, except those that you provide for us.
Ah, look, a haughty european expert on the many ways that I, as an American, am fucked up. My personal space is roughly six feet, and you're a freakin' cliche.
There is no better book on the subject of madness and sanity? Are you insane? If I ever went to see a psychiatrist for anti-social/anger issues (which I don't have), and he told me that a fictional (I don't give a rat's ass how many metaphors are in it, it's fiction) book written in the 1600's was his sole teacher and reference, I'm afraid I'd have to beat him with it just for wasting my time.
Works of art are not meant to be understood or appreciated by all, regardless of intellect or status. I completely fail to understand how your enjoyment and knowledge of a particular piece of art makes anyone else, who doesn't appreciate it (and therefore can't be bothered to remember a name that is essentially meaningless to them), a "true" ignoramus. Rather, it makes me again question the validity of your implied claim of superiority.
If you're attempting to spread some culture, great; but turn off the personality, it's detracting from your efforts, and distracting at best.
Did you know that buddug spelled backwards is guddub? Ok, anyway.
I was - excuse me for a sec.... I had a thought but it was one of those thoughts you have where you realize you have a thought before you know what the thought is so you sort of have to wait for it to come out. Ok, I'm ready now.
You sort of remind me of one of those types who smokes pot but doesn't realize that the "brilliant insights" you get when you smoke pot are really neither brilliant nor insightful.
Somebody had to break it to you, I suppose.
Yeah, beestie... kind of like a rabid Tool fan.
Yeah, beestie... kind of like a rabid Tool fan.
WHOA! TOO FAR! TAKE IT BACK!
Wow Ibram, you've got a mean streak.:D
... Americans always talk too close to their interlocutor . They invade your space . ...
It's ironic how you celebrate individuality, yet you can easily characterize hundreds of millions of people.
That was an amusing troll; we're done now, thank you for your performance.
Bud, I spent some years as a secretary. The rule is that you put a space after a period, not before. Some old-school secretaries add two spaces.
I was not old school.
Some old-school secretaries add two spaces.
I was not old school.
Of course, HTML makes that choice for you by turning all whitespace into a single space.
Bud, I spent some years as a secretary. The rule is that you put a space after a period, not before. Some old-school secretaries add two spaces.
I was not old school.
Some old school secretaries type Lowercase-L for One. That's a pain in the ass for analysis programs.
Hey, the troll is an individual, unlike us period-hugging conformists that can't think for ourselves. To think that I appeared in a production of Man of La Mancha and I still type like an American.
Some old school secretaries learned on typewriters that did not have a number one on the keyboard.
And don't get me started on proportional spacing typewriters. They were hell.
Wow Ibram, you've got a mean streak.:D
When I get in that mood... I can impale on sharp jabs of unexpected teenage angst and rage harnessed into brutal, cynical barbs.
Some old school secretaries learned on typewriters that did not have a number one on the keyboard.
I'm not old school nor a secretary bt I tooka typing course close to the end of elementary school and learned on an old typewriter that used to belong to my mother (we didn't have computer back then (in 94/95-or-so-ish) and it didn't have a number one on it. That used to amaze and amuse me to no end. I just couldn't fathom why anyone would make a typewriter without a one.
Thankfully, Don Quixote uses punctuation properly (in both languages.)
Not to mention Cervantes.
;)
I don't remember buddug giving you people permission to talk among yourselves.........I'm tellin'. :p
Wolf , I have been giving some thought to this . The fact is that I have never learnt to type formally on any sort of machine . I learnt how to write with a quill , and my teachers always insisted on us leaving a space the width of our forefinger between the last letter of the sentence and the full stop . And the another forefinger between the full stop and the first letter of the next sentence .
I may seem like a sad anachronism , but at least the finger spaces are those corresponding to my old skinny kid fingers . Imagine if I wrote using the fat bloated fingers I now possess . It would look like this . Terrible . Even worse . Far worse .
Footfootfoot , you are right of course , but to be fair to old Clodfobble , Cervantes did try to blur the lines between the writer and the fictional characters he created . Mise en abyme and all that , if you will excuse my French .
P.S. I tried to leave wider spaces to illustrate my point , but they have not come up on the screen . Never mind .
Some old school secretaries type Lowercase-L for One. That's a pain in the ass for analysis programs.
It is a pain in the ass today, too, as there are several Windows monospaced fonts that make a "1" and "l" look exactly alike. Which font did the idiot webmaster make the corporate passwords list in? This one shown below, which displays alternating '1's and 'l's.
He also used some Flash trickery to prohibit text copy and source views. We spent much of our time getting locked out of systems and waiting for resets as we had to guess.
I just couldn't fathom why anyone would make a typewriter without a one.
Usually "portables"...to save weight. My dad had one just like this one:
The word is psychobabble. You should see a doctor about having your hypen removed.
"Does anal-retentive have a hyphen?" --
Alison BechdelNo , just a sort of hymen .
P.S. I tried to leave wider spaces to illustrate my point , but they have not come up on the screen . Never mind .
[CODE]If
you're inclined
...to express yourself so typographically
(and typewriterly; like Don Marquis' cockroach
Archie,
who communicated by jumping on typewriter
keys and could thus only type all in lower
case, observing "i never learned to shift for myself"...)
-- and thus require high visual fidelity to your keying --
I d o r e c o m m e n d t h e < c o d e > tag.[/CODE]
Yeah, beestie... kind of like a rabid Tool fan.
hey now
... but to be fair to old Clodfobble , Cervantes did try to blur the lines between the writer and the fictional characters he created . Mise en abyme and all that , if you will excuse my French .
I was really impressed by Ed Ames' reading of "The Impossible Dream". Do you know if Cervantes liked Ames' version better, or Jim Nabors' rendition?
I join and found companies that compete with Google. Is that DonQuixote-esque enough for the Bud?
In the 60's I grew up using a 1910 Underwood No. 5. By 1971 I was using Teletype 33 over 110 baud modem.
I am still reeling from the fact that I had always thought it proper to put 2 spaces after a period, and one after a comma. In fact, I remember getting deductions on high school term papers for such debauchery as using only one space after a period. Have I now entered an alternate universe? Worse yet, had I entered an alternate universe, previously and just now noticed? If so, when did life as I knew it change? Holy shit! What happened to my pants?!?
:smashfrea
I never learned not to put two spaces after a period. Incredibly, HTML corrects that, by default. You can put ten spaces after the period if you like, it doesn't matter.
You technically are s'posta, I think, but I don't cause im a lazy bastard, and dont care enough to remind myself to do it.
I am still reeling from the fact that I had always thought it proper to put 2 spaces after a period, and one after a comma. In fact, I remember getting deductions on high school term papers for such debauchery as using only one space after a period.
Same here, I still do it, just by habit. If I don't, it seems smooshed together to me.
:lol:
"Does anal-retentive have a hyphen?" --Alison Bechdel
Same here, I still do it, just by habit. If I don't, it seems smooshed together to me.
I never heard of it....was this taught in typing class? :confused:
Yep. My text looks fine in the edit box and cramped in the post. I probably sing better in the shower too.
I never heard of it....was this taught in typing class? :confused:
Yep. And everywhere else - preparing legal briefs, technical writing, journalism, etc. I don't think they stopped teaching it until the advent of the proportional font in word processors.
Yep. And everywhere else - preparing legal briefs, technical writing, journalism, etc. I don't think they stopped teaching it until the advent of the proportional font in word processors.
Spaces
after punctuation, of course. But never
before.
[code]If
you're inclined
...to express yourself so typographically
(and typewriterly; like Don Marquis' cockroach Archie,
who communicated by jumping on typewriter
keys and could thus only type all in lower
case, observing "i never learned to shift for myself"...)
-- and thus require high visual fidelity to your keying --
I d o r e c o m m e n d t h e < c o d e > tag.[/code]
i'm having
an e.e. cummings
moment
I am still reeling from the fact that I had always thought it proper to put 2 spaces after a period, and one after a comma. In fact, I remember getting deductions on high school term papers for such debauchery as using only one space after a period. Have I now entered an alternate universe? Worse yet, had I entered an alternate universe, previously and just now noticed? If so, when did life as I knew it change? Holy shit! What happened to my pants?!?
:smashfrea
That is true according to Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style"
It is two spaces AFTER a period, not BEFORE. And one space after a comma or other mid sentence break, (e.g. semicolon).
And yes you have entered an alternate universe; it was a while ago; life as you knew it changed on October 17, 1978 6:25 am GMT.
Relax, your pants are just down around your ankles.
I actually had a dot-comma argument with my partner about a writing style issue. On the phone, he says to me "No comma between the last two elements of a list; from Strunk and White". So, I pull the book down from my shelf and it says the oppposite as in: "blue, green, red, and yellow" So, I used that style on our company web site.
But, in modern practice my partner was right. In many ways modern usage has evolved from the time of Strunk and White. Now a better guide is the AP Style Book by Associated Press.
http://www.apstylebook.com Now a better guide is the AP Style Book by Associated Press.
http://www.apstylebook.com
Hmmph. Given how accurate they seem to be in other realms I surely wouldn't worship anything AP says. Consider cross-checking with the Chicago Manual and the Holt Handbook before gainsaying Strunk and White.
I never heard of it....was this taught in typing class? :confused:
I actually never took typing class. They were part of the guidelines when writing papers in High School (maybe middle school). Points were deducted if there was only one space.
Hmmph. Given how accurate they seem to be in other realms I surely wouldn't worship anything AP says. Consider cross-checking with the Chicago Manual and the Holt Handbook before gainsaying Strunk and White.
That's like saying Allen Iverson has a lot of turnovers; well he handles the ball 80% of the time. Associated Press writes 80% of the news for this country. The media outlets just present it to you. Fox News spends less money to gather news itself than any other major outlet. AP is a non-profit organization owned by its corporate members.
"blue, green, red, and yellow" http://www.apstylebook.com
To me, not having the final comma makes it look like the last two elements are a part of a whole. A more illustrative example of this might be something like: "An airplane, a spaceship, cars, and trucks." To write it "an airplane, a spaceship, cars and trucks" sets cars and trucks as a part of a whole i.e. cars and trucks as land-roving vehicles.
I don't think I'm explaining myself very well, but I do remember being taught to put the comma before the 'and' in a list.
Yes, I totally agree with you S123. As a computer scientist my feeling is that without the comma, the statement doesn't type check.
But, after this argument that I had, I noticed professional journalists don't use the comma anymore. I was arguing with a guy who was an Editor in Chief of several publications. It's a stupid convention, but that's the way it's done now.
Commas are important. "Eats shoots and leaves" or "Eats, shoots and leaves"?
Yes, I totally agree with you S123. As a computer scientist my feeling is that without the comma, the statement doesn't type check.
ditto
I think you would all enjoy reading the relatively recent book by Lynne Truss , entitled 'Eats , Shoots and Leaves '. It was in every Brit's Christmas stocking two years ago .
The title shows how much the incorrect use of a comma can transform a sentence . In this particular case , the diet of a panda can be misconstrued as being something to do with a Far-West shoot-out .
Associated Press writes 80% of the news for this country.
Doesn't make it any truer.
Doesn't make it any truer.
Actually, it does make it truer. If they are the ones who write the news, they make the new comma rule happen.
Until I had a partnership with AP, I didn't realize how ubiquitous their content is.
I've read E,S&L. Unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't say you put a space before a full stop. Nor does anything else I've read.
Though from first grade onwards, I've been taught that the comma before the 'and' is completely optional. I personally put it there because it seems like it should be there to me, but I think not putting it there is just as correct.
Yeah, I was taught the comma before the and was optional, you just had to be consistent. :cool:
'Eats , Shoots and Leaves '
This is as much a victim of sentence structure, poor choice of words, as it is punctuation.
Ibram , I do not put a space before a full stop when I am writing with a pen . I just do it when I am typing on a machine . As I have already explained , I have never learnt how to type formally . It is still quite a difficult exercise for me . I think because it is difficult , I have gone back in my head to being a little girl learning how to write with a quill . When we learnt , we were told to leave a space before the full stop , to avoid smudging . What I do is a sort of throwback , if you like . I must stop it . Atavistic spaces .
About the comma ; you are right , and wrong at the same time . There is no static rule , for the comma is not a static entity . It can be used as a breathing device , and it can also be used semantically .
When you say 'I like cats and dogs' , you do not need an extra breath , unless you are a serious asthmatic . However , you may need an extra breath after reciting the list of all the animals in Noah's Ark . You would put a comma before the final 'and' in the latter case .
Now , lets talk about cats and dogs in another way . We are talking about semantics i.e. implicit meaning now . We are not talking about lists any more :
'Cats , and dogs , just lurv Pussymunch croquettes !'
The implication in the above sentence is that you may be surprised to know that dogs too love this particular brand of catfood . The comma has helped us to understand the idea our interlocutor wishes to convey .
The comma is all about fine-tuning .
And now I have bored everyone into a coma .
A comma coma? :)
Not common!
I know the proper format to use when writing, but often, what I am trying to convey seems too dry and unemotional when written correctly. I prefer to write the way I speak, with pauses and interjections in addition to as much personal expression as I can work into the words.
My writing may not win any grammar or punctuation awards, but I get my point across just fine, thank ya very much :) .
Stormie
Well , yes of course , Stormieweather . I belong to the descriptive school of linguistics myself . I leave the prescriptions to the doctors . That said , the describers always start getting prescriptive after a while .
And then we churn it all up again . I love it . It means that I have job-security .
I prefer the Oxford Comma [Red, White, and Blue] because it conforms to the original intent of punctuation: a "musical notation" for the spoken word.
I prefer to write the way I speak, with pauses and interjections in addition to as much personal expression as I can work into the words.
As someone whose mode of spoken communication resembles something like Woody Allen, or Jeff Goldblum, I agree that adhering to proper grammatical rules just doesn't always get the job done. Especially in this day and age, when long-term friendships are carried out entirely via typed text, we stretch to convey that element of humanity in our correspondance.
A comma coma
Better a comma coma than a bored colon.
("Rectum!? It nearly killed 'em!")
Forgetting not the difference betwen a cat and a comma...
This whole dot-comma discussion is hilarious because of the big fight I had with my sales partner. We were at the point of not trusting each other, I kept him too long w/o firing him, and we had some stupid arguments. Finally, I listened to my business advisors and fired the sales guy (who sold nothing in two years).
One of my advisors calls that incident the dot-comma bust.
Incredible how a colon can entrail so much .....
I read this whole post, for some unknown reason and have just one question - Buddog, does this post-it note of yours have a point???
I read this whole post, for some unknown reason and have just one question - Buddog, does this post-it note of yours have a point???
:haha:
interestingly in primary school, the only place where grammar seems to matter these days, i was taught to NEVER use a comma before 'and'. i always feel rebellious if i write 'red, white, and blue' and it always looks wrong to me...
interestingly in primary school, the only place where grammar seems to matter these days, i was taught to NEVER use a comma before 'and'. i always feel rebellious if i write 'red, white, and blue' and it always looks wrong to me...
Yes, it looks wrong to me too. But, if Associated Press writes it that way, that becomes the standard.
I think it is really stupid. But, I do not stand in the way of a 100 year old company that writes 80% of the nation's news. That would be foolish.
But, if Associated Press writes it that way, that becomes the standard.
Punctuation is, and has always been, a printer's convention.
interestingly in primary school, the only place where grammar seems to matter these days, i was taught to NEVER use a comma before 'and'. i always feel rebellious if i write 'red, white, and blue' and it always looks wrong to me...
I was taught the opposite. I always had to put the comma in the list. It was never optional for me. The only way there wasn't a comma is if there were only two items in the list. I am so used to the comma before the "and" that I don't think I would do it any other way.
Hello
I have decided to write a general message , as many of my answers dovetail into this one .
It would be unreasonable of me to expect you to read everything written by Shakespeare . It is totally reasonable of me to ask you to read Don Quijote de La Mancha however ( 1605 for the first part , 1615 for the second part ). The English translation is easily available , and for the true ignoramii , do not forget that the author is Cervantes . This book will help you to explore the idea of madness and sanity . There is no better book on the subject . And you are not told what to think . You are free to think .
Read great literature instead of immersing yourself in the self-indulgent psycho-babble peddled by quacks .
And never forget that there will never be any answers , ever .
It is totally reasonable of me to ask you to learn to use punctuation properly, rather than put an extraneous space in front of each period and comma. It is
also totally reasonable of me to ask you to take your "required reading directive" and naff off.
I read what I choose to read. Of late, that has included several of David Weber's novels,
Game Of Shadows and a biography of Teddy Roosevelt.
(The plural of
ignoramus is
political party. Good "entrail" pun. And Jabbly is right: Don't put a comma before "and" in a list.)
The Oxford Comma is completely debatable. Some use it, some don't.
Source: U of NC.edu
[COLOR="Red"]5. X,Y, and Z
Put commas between items in a list. When giving a short and simple list of things in a sentence, the last comma (right before the conjunction–usually and or or) is optional, but it is never wrong. If the items in the list are longer and more complicated, you should always place a final comma before the conjunction.
EITHER: You can buy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles.
OR: You can buy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles.
BUT ALWAYS: A good student listens to his teachers without yawning, reads once in a while, and writes papers before they are due.[/COLOR]
So, as stated, commas are optional in a list and it is correct to do either (of course depending on source.) I just think it makes more sense: Verbally "You can buy life...libertyandthepursuitofhappiness in Los Angeles." Why set libertyandthepursuitofhappiness apart from life as if it is a single entity?
Just my humble op!
To me, not having the final comma makes it look like the last two elements are a part of a whole. A more illustrative example of this might be something like: "An airplane, a spaceship, cars, and trucks." To write it "an airplane, a spaceship, cars and trucks" sets cars and trucks as a part of a whole i.e. cars and trucks as land-roving vehicles.
Stop and say it out loud, pausing everytime you hit a comma.
Now you see why the comma before "and" is inappropriate. The best writing is conversational, not stilted and formal.
Regarding the "one spaces or two after a sentence rule" discussion ... as somebody already noted, using the "justify" command in your word processor makes that particular "rule" superfluous. Any teacher trying to deduct points for it in the PC era is being a bit too picky, obsessing with minor style details while not paying attention to the message itself.
Hmmph. Given how accurate they seem to be in other realms I surely wouldn't worship anything AP says. Consider cross-checking with the Chicago Manual and the Holt Handbook before gainsaying Strunk and White.
The AP goes out of its way to ensure accuracy and issues prompt and accurate corrections when it's wrong (which puts it several orders of magnitude above, say, Bill O'Reilly). Frequently, two or three versions of one story move in the same news cycle to ensure that the information the AP is correct; 99 times out of 100, corrections deal with minor style mistakes and/or misspellings rather than factuality. The chief exception to this is the sports wire; it tends to be more bleeding-edge in terms of the information going out because of AP members' final deadlines, which in the Eastern Time Zone fall within 90 minutes of the end of prime-time games. Unfortunately for my stress level in my former job, official scorers have a habit of changing their decisions at the last minute (and usually less than two minutes after I had sent my last page off to the plate burner in the pressroom :neutral: ).
An out-and-out KILL signal for a grossly inaccurate story is rarely sent and rarely has to be. I haven't seen any for that reason in over two years; the last KILL orders I
have seen were for outdated stories that moved on a previous day which were accidentally resent despite being outdated.
AP style is neat, clean and consistent. It's focused more on delievering the message than it is with miscellaneous style points. It's also what many kids are becoming used to; because most website news is AP, the AP's brand of style will be what those kids see more than anything else.
Disclaimer: I never worked at the AP, but I have many professional colleagues who do work there.
Personally, I learned that a comma is optional before and (though I always use one), there is one space after a comma or semicolon, and two spaces after a period.
On the other hand, my fiance does not use a comma before the last item in a list, and only puts one space after a period.
We grew up in the same area of Texas. Who decided that we were going to learn two completely different things? And why are both acceptable if one is supposed to be "right" over the other?
Although I have had one tiny little conversation about this debate, I really think I've got much bigger things to worry about right now. Just don't tell me the way I'm doing it is wrong, and everything will be fine.