The Apostrophe

An Apostrophe walks into a rather seedy bar.

The barman says - 'Mate I think you're in the wrong place' [1]
                                          ----------------------------------------------------------------------


Why do people get so hung up (pardon the pun) on the apostrophe?


Did you know there is even an Apostrophe Protection Society in the U.K? 
True! You can find their website here.


Wikipedia goes on and on about the rules governing the use of the apostrophe. Pages and pages and pages of rules.

For those interested you can view them here. Personally I wouldn't bother! I'd rather use the three basic rules offered by the Apostrophe Protection Society (herein refered to as the APS because I am tired of writing the word apostrophe.)

The pedants of apostrophe usage, APS [2] say there are three basic rules and I'm happy to go with them.


 Their basic rules are:-


1. They are used to denote a missing letter or letters, for example:

I can't for I cannot.
It's for it is.
I don't for I do not.


2. They are used to denote possession, for example:

The dog's bone.
The company's logo.
Jones's bakery (but Joneses' bakery if owned by more than one Jones)


3. Apostrophes are never ever used to denote plurals! Common examples of such abuse (all seen in real life!) are:

Banana's for sale. - should be Bananas for sale.
Menu's printed to order - should read Menus printed to order.
1000's of bargains - should be 1000s of bargains


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For much of this blog I have referred to a book titled Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. by Lynn Truss. [3]
It's a very funny read even if you don't give a hoot about punctuation, give it a look.
There is a review of the book on The Guardian.
You can read it here.

[1] -The Author.
[2] The apostrophe Protection Society
[3] Truss, L 2009, Eats, Shoots and Leaves:The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Fourth Estate, Hammersmith, UK.

You can quote me

Inverted commas are also known as quotation marks


They can be single ‘ ...’ or double “...”

There doesn’t seem to be any set rule except when using both in one sentence, as in:

He questioned “Why would Jack say ‘You shouldn’t do that’ ?”


In this instance the first quotation mark is double and the inner quotation is in single quote marks.

Note the question mark is inside the final quotation mark.


Even in the case of single use of quotation marks the punctuation is inside the quote marks

“Will you be my best friend?”


The only time the end punctuation is outside the quote marks is when you might use quotes to draw attention to a phrase.

For example: I don’t believe in ‘mercy killing’.


If a quotation uses poor grammar use [sic.] to note it.

She wrote, "I would rather die then [sic] be seen wearing the same outfit as my sister."
She should have used than instead of then. [1]


Quote marks can also be used to denote sarcasm or irony. [2] as in

In his “wisdom”...

Quesgtion: What is the difference between Irony and sarcasm?

Irony is conveying something by saying the exact opposite. Sarcasm is meant to be hurtful an mocking. Irony is not. [3]

Quotation marks have other uses as well.

For example you might put a nickname in quote marks. Edward “Carji” Greeves.

Or to denote the title of a book. Peter Robinsons “Aftermath”

Or for “unusual” usage. My dog just seems to “know” when I am approaching the house.

You can even use verbal quote marks although thankfully the practice appears to be dying out.

Put your arms out shoulder wide and head height and waggle the first two fingers on each hand as you say the “quote”. It’s very silly and you look like a twot.

To summarise:

You can use single or double quote marks, you can use them for direct quotes, or to emphasise a word, you can use them verbally. The main rule is punctuation (full stop, question mark, etc.) goes inside the closing quote marks except on rare occasions.


[1 Quotes,Grammarbook, viewed 9 october 2011< http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp>


[2] Quotation mark,Wikpedia, viewed 9 october 2011,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark>


[3] Sarcasm-vs-irony, UsingEnglish, viewed 9 october 2011,<http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/67799-sarcasm-vs-irony.html>

In the beginning...

According to the New World Encyclopaedia [1] and Wikipedia[2] the oldest use of punctuation was in a document called "Mesha Stele." or "Moabit stone."

It was written circa 850 BCE by King Mesha of Moab (now part of Jordan) and is notable for

employing points between the words and horizontal strokes between the sense section as punctuation.

It was discovered in 1868 and is on display at the Louvre Museum.

It is also the oldest known reference to the Hebrew god Yahweh.

Movable type and printing in the 14th and 15th centuries saw the beginnings of punctuation as we know it today.

The introduction of a standard system of punctuation is attributed to Aldo Manuzio.

 He is credited with popularizing the practice of ending sentences with the colon or full stop and also for inventing Italic type.

Punctuation in other European languages is the same as English with a few exceptions.

 In France for instance instead of inverted commas for quotation marks they use << and >>.

Greeks use the semicolon ( ;) as a question mark and in Spain they put an upside down question mark at the beginning of a question and a normal question mark at the end.
So it would look like this:

¿Is your name Bernie? – except  it would be in Spanish of course.

Hebrew punctuation is as complicated as ours and more difficult to write. They in fact have their own keyboard with their own letters and punctuation.

Sometimes it has Arabic letters and symbols as well due to the high percentage of Arab speakers in Israel.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean didn’t originally have punctuation as their language(s) are made up of symbols rather than letters.

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Punctuation Puzzle

I remember my Father testing me on this one.

Insert the comma(s) in the correct place.

The teacher said that that that that that boy used should have been which.

Where do the commas go?



[1]New World Encyclopedia. 22 Oct 2008, 15:24 UTC. 7 Oct 2011, 02:51 <http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mesha_Stele?oldid=836298>




[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation#History

Parentheses ( Brackets)

Parentheses are also known as brackets. They come in different styles and for different reasons.
They can be half round ( ) or square [ ] or curly { } 


The intention of the bracket is to include additional information in the writing, but the piece of writing should stand alone and be correct and complete without the added information.
For example. I went to an exhibition (by Henry Maas) on Sunday at the Collingwood Gallery.


The above sentence was written by me. If the editor of this blog had added the parentheses he (or she) would have used square brackets indicating it was inserted by someone other than the writer. 
So it would be:
I went to an exhibition [by Henry Maas] on Sunday at the Collingwood Gallery.


They can be used together (if you want to include an aside [or even some detail like a date] or  superfluous information) if required.


They can definitely be overused. Here is an example:


According to the executive, "[The infinitite number of monkeys] are [creating an infinite number of blogs] each of which contain an infinite number of blogs, each of which contains [a randomly created] review, so that [the Google search engine] is fooled into thinking that it continually ['sees'] new blogs that reference [a given feature film] ." This way, those who have activated 'Google Alerts' for a specific film are sent multiple results multiple times each day, all of which lead to the same [illegal] download site. [1]






The multitude of brackets is distracting from the meaning of the text.


 Rewritten without the brackets it looks like this:


According to the executive, are each of which contains review, so that is  fooled into thinking that it continually new blogs that reference. This way those who have activated Google Alerts for a specific film are sent multiple results multiple times each day, all of which lead to the same download site.


The writers error here is that deleting what is within the brackets renderers the paragraph useless. At the same time, it at least is more attractive to the eye.


Curly brackets { } are not often used, but are sometimes used to denote a series of equal choices.
For example. Select your animal {Goat, Sheep, cow, pig}...


Curly brackets are most often used in mathematics. For example:


 
Please don't ask me what it means.                    [2]


There are other brackets. In computing <  and  > are common.

So to summarise:


Don't overuse brackets. They make a sentence look messy and they can be unattractive.


When you write a sentence that includes brackets, make sure it stands alone without the brackets.


Use round brackets ( ) to add extra information.


Use square brackets [ ] to add extra information from an outside source.


Use curly brackets { } to indicate equal choice.




1. Isn't Life Terrible: Infinite Number of Monkeys at Typewriter Finally Give up on Hamlet: Now Working on Reviews Of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" 4 Febuary 2009, viewed 5 October 2011http://030726d.netsolhost.com/WordPress/?tag=overuse-of-brackets>


2. Bracket: Wikipedia the free Encyclopaedia, viewed 5 October 2011 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket>

The Hoax and The Hyphen

In 1918 William Strunk and E.B.White wrote the first edition of an American style-guide called 'The Elements of Style. The book concentrated on questions of usage and cultivation of style in good writing.
It included, amongst other areas, 11 rules for punctuation and grammar. It has been updated and re-published many times, the latest being in 2005.


In 1999, a journalist for the Washington Post Bob Hirshfield, who was heartily sick of poor spelling and grammar, wrote an article about a new computer virus called the Strunkenwhite Virus. 
This virus was 'more dangerous than the Chernobyl threat'. Apparently the virus refused to deliver emails with grammatical errors. It would apparently shut down the computer that sent the email and take hours to restart. He quoted the FBI who (via the telephone because he was too scared to use his computer email system) stated this insidious virus was 'a threat too freedom and Western Society, blah, blah, blah.'


The article was of course a hoax, but the sales of 'The Elements of Style' increased dramatically at the time.


                              -----------------The Hyphen------------


The Hyphen is a little discussed punctuation mark that is very useful and requires some discussion even though its usage seems to be declining.


It was invented by Guttenberg when he was devising his movable type. In short, if a word was not completed by the end of a line he included a hyphen to indicate the word was unfinished and cont- 
ued on the next line. Clever eh! 


Now it is used to change the meaning of a word but needs to be used carefully.


Consider extra-marital sex and extra marital sex.
Or man-eating shark to man eating shark.
Or re-formed rock band to reformed rock band.


It is also nessesary use it to spell out numbers (Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six)  and to link proper nouns (Melbourne-Albury train, Frankston-Dandenong Road)

Another use is to avoid 'letter collision.'
Consider shell-like if it was written as shelllike or re-use as reuse.


The Germans could do with a few hyphens in their language.
They seem to take pleasure of taking two or three words and jamming them together.
To us English speakers some words are long and unweildly and we need to look hard at it to decipher and pronounce it.


Volkswagen means peoples wagon or car. 
The infamous Kristallnacht means literally the night of broken glass.
Dummkopf means numb head.
Doppelganger is double-goer meaning your exact double.
Schadenfreude means pleasure derived from the pain of others.



Thank Guttenberg for the hyphen, but I wish he could have encouraged his fellow Germans to put it to more use.



.[1] Truss,L. 2009 Eats, Roots and Leaves: the zero tolerance approach to punctuation,  Profile, London

The Future of Punctuation :-)

Since I have been writing this blog, it has set me to thinking about the future of punctuation. Texters use very little or no punctuation at all, dreadful spelling and funny little representations instead of a word or punctuation mark like ! or ?
It's a concern that punctuation may be damaged irreparably or lost altogether.

Below are a few messages I retreived from my 'phone this morning.

I'm quiet a sight Ha ha!

Catch ya's tomoro

... remind me 2 bring over some dvds 2 watch:-O    [what does :-O mean anyway?]

Then this morning while taking my morning coffee, I opened The Age to read [1]  research has linked children's use of text abbreviations with improved literacy.

The question asked is 'are children losing the capacity to read and write?

The answer they came up with after research is 'probably not.'
It is believed that having fun with texting is creative and 'leads to creativity and intuition in crosswords, poetry and so on'.
Masla and Tarica quote Britain's poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy ( who 'beieves texting is the ideal springboard to poetry writing') and psychologist Dr. Nenagh Kemp who states that 'language is  liquid and flourishing.' and 'it makes sense that someone who is good at language, is also good at crosswords, poetry, etc.'
Young people do understand that while they can have fun and be creative with texts and emails,
They also understand that they cannot and they do not use incorrect spelling, grammar or punctuation in formal letter writing or schoolwork.

Remember that the group of students getting educated right now are doing so to the highest level in the history of this civilisation.
Why would they throw away 20 something years of learning and their chance to get that job they want so badly, by writing their resume in textspeak or ignoring punctuation.
So there you are all you grouches and pedants out there. Get over it. Texting is fun. U2 can do it. Spell it wrongly if U want 2. Abbrev. yr words. Do little smiley faces :-) Relax it's just a txt.
The fucha is probly safe in their hands.


[1] Maslen, G. Tarica, G 2011, 'Textese g8 training 4 poets of 2 moro' The Age 12 Sept, p. 16

Puntuation Blog 1

PUNCTUATION – A HOBBYHORSE       

Punctuation (from the Latin punctus for point or pricking) is the use of a series of symbols to help in the understanding of English both written and aural. The word is from the same Latin root as punctilious meaning atentative to etiquette, and punctual meaning on time.

Punctuation marks are a guide to when to pause (the full stop or period), when to give a pause (the colon) when to give a shorter pause (the semi-colon) and the shortest pause (the comma), when to add an inflection (exclamation mark or question mark again), and more.

Punctuation can add lilt and music to reading out loud. It gives clear explanation of meaning rather than something slightly ambiguous.

Read the two sentences below and compare

A woman:  without her, man is nothing.

A woman without her man, is nothing.

Punctuation began to take the form we see it in today, around the 15^th or 16^th century, and has evolved to the point of being a distraction (if it is incorrect) to many people like myself. We see a comma in the wrong spot (although I’m not an expert on the comma) and our hackles rise in line with our blood pressure.

Many a curmudgeon has written angry letters to newspapers decrying the ‘young people of today’ and their lack of literary understanding, and ‘why don’t they use correct grammar when sending emails and text messages’.

Punctuation (especially the apostrophe) is a hobbyhorse for so many that there is, in the UK the Apostrophe Protection Society