was she trying for irony?
Apr. 20th, 2004 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioEats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation sounds like a great book for grammar nerds, but I am put off somewhat by the 1.5 punctuation errors in the title. (One is debatable and might be excused by context (it refers to a joke containing the phrase); the other is clearly wrong.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 05:52 am (UTC)Actually, one of the complaints I read about the American printing of the book was that there was no introduction added to explain the differences between American and British English grammar.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:01 am (UTC)Hmm, I hadn't considered that. I know that the missing comma is controversial, but I didn't realize there might be a flavor of English that permits the missing hyphen. (I hope anyone with direct experience will speak up.)
Yeah, if there are grammar differences and they published it here without any hints to that effect, I'd probably be frustrated too.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:21 am (UTC)Both formats are now equally acceptable. We went several rounds on this on in my technical writing class. No clue on the hypen, though. :)
And you can hear her in person tomorrow
Date: 2004-04-20 04:48 pm (UTC)My favorite line of the clip was
"Those old things over there are my husbands"
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:51 am (UTC)This is consistent with the Wikipedia's claim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen) that most advertising and labeling eschews use of the hyphen in favor of visual cleanliness.
(The comma thing was obviously intentional. The whole point is to attract the attention of grammar sticklers such as yourself.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-24 02:36 pm (UTC)In, I think, the TEXbook, or possibly the LATEX book, or some such similar book on computerized typesetting published by Addison-Wesley, on the very first page after the cover appeared the usual list of the publisher's cities, including "Signapore". You'd think that would be boilerplate that would just be copied and pasted into every book they did, but I guess not. This was less than 10 years ago, too, so it's not like the use of computers in publishing was a new thing. Not quite the same thing as here, but close.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:08 am (UTC)the comma
Date: 2004-04-20 06:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:17 am (UTC)(That was the example that convinced Steve Jackson Games to change its house style to use the serial comma.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:49 am (UTC)Over here we are taught to hyphenate multi-word adjectives (some say just two-word adjectives), so it should be "zero-tolerance approach", not "zero tolerance approach". What do they teach in the UK?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 06:55 am (UTC)Both forms of the adjective thing are valid, as far as I know.
Thanks for explaining!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:02 am (UTC)Yup, preserving the original (incorrect) comma from the joke justifies the comma thing. Personally, I (in the US) would have punctuated the title as follows: "Eats, Shoots & Leaves": The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. And I know my high-school grammar teacher would throw a hissy fit over the placement of the colon outside the close quote (it's definitely a minority position among non-tech-writer writers); I would be willing to concede a dash (not a hyphen) to replace the colon (outside the quote!) as a gesture of cooperation. :-) But the quotes would signal clearly that the initial phrase is a quotation from elsewhere and not my text.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:05 am (UTC)Interesting. So is the following really punctuated correctly according to those who would do that marking? "jazz, rhythm and blues and Peter, Paul and Mary"
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:16 am (UTC)Having said that, despite having picked up a very keen sense of grammar over the years I didn't get much formal tuition in it, so the finer points sometimes elude me, time to reach for Fowler's English Grammar and Usage for a definitive version!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:57 am (UTC)A, B and Z <- correct
A, B, and Z <- wrong
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 09:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 09:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 09:58 am (UTC)I _never_ got to be in a class that did those really kewl and complex diagrams that were farther in the book! *pout*
Later in high school when I was forced to witness and share the frustration of my 2nd or 3rd year french teacher have to waste a class explaining _adjectives_ to people I _really_ wanted to institute a "Ok... look... you may not think this grammar stuff matters... but if you're ever going to try to learn a second western language _please_ learn the basics of your own for comparision!"
I always wondered if it would have been easier for some of them to 'get' a few things if they'd had sentance diagramming in english and then did it again in the second languages they were working on..... but we never diagrammed sentances in French so I don't know....
(but there were gonna be these lines over here... and what to do if you had _clauses_ and stuff...... *sigh*)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 02:10 pm (UTC)I tutored freshmen in English 101 when I was a senior in college, at the prof's request. I was absolutely shocked that these kids had been allowed to graduate from high school with such poor language skills. The worst part was, they didn't care. They figured that as engineers, they'd never have to bother writing anything. Poor saps. I hope they got a clue after I graduated, because they seemed pretty clueless as freshmen... but then, most freshmen do.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 02:32 pm (UTC)I don't see anything to be ashamed of there. Learning a second instance of a skill family -- any skill family -- forces you to learn general concepts, whether the domain is language, programming, cooking, etc. Knowing one language is sort of like knowing how to cook one kind of cake -- you may do it very well, but you probably don't really understand the roles of baking soda versus baking powder just from that, so you have to either study it explicity or learn a second cake.
Sadly, while I have a very, very good intuitive grasp of grammar (beefed up with some formal education, of course, and I'd argue that things like symbolic logic are also relevant), I have a poor vocabulary for describing it. So when somebody says something like "past perfect tense", I don't immediately remember which one that is (I'm referring to the "perfect" part, not the obvious "past" :-) ). Declension? That has something to do with nouns. I can look all this up as needed, of course, but it's not already in the neural cache. At least I explicitly understand conjugation from high-school Spanish and binyan (I don't have an English equivalent for this) from Hebrew. It's a start. I wish we'd had Latin available when I was in school; it would have taught me a lot more at a time when it would have done broader good.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-21 04:20 pm (UTC)Slide Rules
Date: 2004-04-20 09:59 am (UTC)Re: Slide Rules
Date: 2004-04-20 12:04 pm (UTC)Re: Slide Rules
Date: 2004-04-20 01:33 pm (UTC)http://www.hpmuseum.org/srinst.htm
Re: Slide Rules
Date: 2004-04-20 07:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 10:58 am (UTC)I did learn how to use a slide rule, though, because my dad showed me.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-21 11:44 am (UTC)So early on, being into the precision and consistency thing, I adopted the veresion with more commas.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:15 am (UTC)"I have zero tolerance for this approach."
vs.
"The principal's zero-tolerance policy won enthusiastic support from parents."
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 07:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-20 08:49 am (UTC)ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 07:32 am (UTC)What I don't know is if substituting the ampersand symbol changes the rule for placing a comma. I suspect it may, but I don't have a trustworthy non-web reference handy.
Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 08:46 am (UTC)That's a very good question for which I do not have an answer.
As for one versus two spaces between sentences, I know that this is changing but, especially in fixed-width fonts, I still find text easier to read when the two-space convention is followed. Yeah, a web browser or Word or whatever is going to squish 'em down, but at least the source I'm editing in Emacs (or typing as email or an LJ comment) will still be easier for me to work with and proof-read.
Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 12:30 pm (UTC)You actually make a very good point to continue with two spaces after period. The reason why this is "wrong" is that the rule was made for fixed-width typewriters. As The Mac is not a Typewriter points out, the rule is actually "two spaces for monospaced fonts (like a Typewriter), one space for proportional fonts". But with things like the web, you're not really specifying fonts, so you might as well put in two spaces and then let the web browser/whatever fix it for you. (Note: I usually do two spaces out of habit, even though I then go back and fix 'em when it matters.)
Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 02:03 pm (UTC)Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 02:43 pm (UTC)Me too. It's just part of the idea that you don't (or really shouldn't expect to) control rendering; your HTML source is a hint to the browser, but if you're trying to do fine-grained control, you're probably approaching it wrong. HTML (and even moreso XML) is about separating content from rendering; it should work on a high-res display or on a 15" monitor at low setting, and (ideally) on a PDA as well. Web designers who try to craft magazine-style web sites are doing a disservice overall. Unfortunately, a lot of stuff crept into HTML early on that makes it easy to do that kind of web site, and Microsoft Word isn't helping matters. But anyway, my source always has the two spaces, and if the browser wants to change that, well, it's allowed.
Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 11:05 pm (UTC)Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-21 06:47 am (UTC)I'm not aware of any. I think the only way to give the browser stronger hints about the spaces you want is to use the special characters, which is a royal pain in the tush (and makes your source border on unreadable, though I suppose you could write a transformation script if you cared that much).
Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-22 09:50 pm (UTC)Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-23 06:23 am (UTC)Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 11:00 am (UTC)Re: ampersand?
Date: 2004-04-20 12:07 pm (UTC)as one professional to another
Date: 2004-04-20 08:30 am (UTC)I guess writers really have no control over the cover
Date: 2004-04-20 09:27 am (UTC)http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/referenceandlanguages/story/0,6000,1097818,00.html
Re: I guess writers really have no control over the cover
Date: 2004-04-20 09:29 am (UTC)*sheepish grin*