was she trying for irony?

[cellio]

Eats, 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.)

Comments

ampersand?

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

I used to place a comma between the last two items in a list, even when using the word "and." This changed for me within the last several years when I found that it violated some revised grammar rules. (Similar to the "one space after the period between sentences" rule.)

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?

[cellio]

What I don't know is if substituting the ampersand symbol changes the rule for placing a comma.

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?

[goljerp]

As for one versus two spaces between sentences

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?

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

When writing webpages, I always put in two spaces, and just deal with the fact that HTML takes the extra one out. When working at it professionally, though, I actually got taken to task for the single space by a client. I told them that I could go through and add the extra character code to artificially add the extra space, but it'd take me a while, and it would have to be done in all their webpages, or they could live with it. They chose to live with it.

Re: ampersand?

[cellio]

When writing webpages, I always put in two spaces, and just deal with the fact that HTML takes the extra one out.

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?

[eub.livejournal.com]

Do you know if there's any standard way in HTML to express "this is a sentence-ending space"? Failing to give the typesetter that distinction from an interword space is unfortunate. IIRC, it would not even be compliant for a browser to give that interpretation to period-space-space.

Re: ampersand?

[cellio]

Do you know if there's any standard way in HTML to express "this is a sentence-ending space"?

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?

[eub.livejournal.com]

And I would think that doing it that way gives the browser no compliant way to render your sentence-ending space as inter-word length, so it's the same problem in the other direction.

Re: ampersand?

[cellio]

Yup. The problem needs a semantic solution, which AFAIK doesn't exist in the HTML definition.

Re: ampersand?

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

It's not still two spaces after a final stop like a period, question mark or exclamation point? I don't even think about that; I just type it that way.

Re: ampersand?

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Word always flags my use of two spaces after a sentence as a problem. But I learned to do it that way back when I used a typewriter (gasp!) to produce documents, and my thumb just automatically double-clicks that spacebar.