Re: !

yoyleguy <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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".
> 

The despised "greengrocers' apostrophe" in plural's is bad but
superfluous apostrophes in possessives are the worst. I send it's
perpetrators to alt.possesive.its.has.no.apostrophe.

>
> 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.
> 

An interesting, albeit unconventional, use of the Oxford comma. 
I applaud your fearlessly adventuresome approach.

>
> Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
>

Who is TED?  I once had a bear named Ted, or maybe he had me.  
The mists of time make such memories unreliable.  [sigh]

-- 
Sn!pe, birdbrain.         My pet rock Gordon just is.