Re: !

Sn!pe <[email protected]> wrote:
> My generation was taught how to punctuate properly at school! 

Every generation thinks it's the correct one. It's just who actually is
the correct generation that nobody really knows.

> How do you feel about: semicolons; quotation marks; parentheses;
> and (of course) the star performer, the apostrophe?  How about the
> Oxford comma?

I like- no, LOVE, the semi-colon (I can never actually figure out on
whether it has a hyphen or not...) quite a lot and use it a bit
considering how little it gets used in real life. As for the
parentheses, they are alright though I think they look a bit ugly, but
there are no real alternatives. As for the quotation marks, I use them
when I must. With the apostrophe, I always use it correctly, unlike the
(ahem, excuse me,) *plebs* who fail to use it. It's always really
annoying whenever I see "its" where it should be "it's".

As for the Oxford comma, I have always loved it and defended it; if you
didn't have the Oxford comma, you'd have the sentence "In the office
were the strippers, Joseph Stalin and JFK." (I know, old example) which
implies Stalin and JFK were the strippers. Let's look at a more original
example: While on their walk in Egypt, the murderers, Michael Jackson
and George Washington all tripped on a rock. Yes, it's incredibly
anachronistic, but whatever. If you had the Oxford comma, there would be
no ambiguity on if Stalin was a stripper or if Michael Jackson killed
someone.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

-- 
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"Usenet and an elephant, what's the difference?
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