BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Desdemona
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 06:09 PM

These posts will be graded for correct punctuation.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 09:12 PM

Strunk and White have been largely devalued in English classes in the last decade. That little book that has such influence was, I believe, originally written as an essay for students in (duh. . .) either Strunk or White's class, has been treated as received wisdom for far too long. (One wrote it, the other came along and edited it). I think the New Yorker or perhaps the New York Times had a role in the acceptance of the book. I don't remember the whole story.

Those with a burning curiosity about grammar and other composition questions might want to visit Bartleby for a large number of reference books online, or poke around in a place like the Guide to Grammar and Writing that is maintained by an English professor in Hartford, Connecticut.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Crazy Eddie
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 12:03 AM

McGrath of Harlow: "Yes, but irrecognizable means the opposite of recognizable. It's a useful word, without any obvious synonyms."
I haven't got a dictionary to hand, but isn't unrecognisable in common usage, as an antonym of recognisable?
Where does irrecognisable come in?

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 12:11 AM

wotthehell wotthehell

say comma boss comma capital
i apostrophe m getting tired of
being joshed about my
punctuation period capital t followed by
he idea seems to be
that capital i apostrophe m
ignorant where punctuation
is concerned period capital n followed by
o such thing semi
colon the fact is that
the mechanical exigencies of
the case prevent my use of
all the characters on the
typewriter keyboard period
capital i apostrophe m
doing the best capital
i can under difficulties semicolon
and capital i apostrophe m
grieved at the unkindness
of the criticism period please
consider that my name is signed in small
caps period
archy period

capital a rchie was a giant cockroach who jumped about on the keys of a typewriter period capital h e would climb on the framework and cast himself with all his force upon a key comma head downward comma and his weight was just sufficient to operate the machine comma one slow letter after another period capital h e had a great deal of difficulty operating the shift mechanism period capital i apostrophe m his reincarnation in the computer age and capital i find things somewhat easier because capital i can jump on a key called enter to change to the next line period

The poem is from archy and mehitabel by don marquis and the text that follows is written with apologies to don marquis comma archy and mehitabel the cat period

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 03:15 AM

I think all these misuses of language come from people not reading. We learn to speak by listening to thosae around us; only later do we learn to read. People who don't read enough will never learn the proper use and usefulness of puctuation, and will miss out on most of the fun you can have with language.

Steve

P.S. Of course, if you'de read The Catcher in the Rye at an impressionable age, you would of picked up some bad habits!

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: kendall
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 08:25 AM

If he would of...if I wouldn't have...he was like, and then she was like... I simply cant listen to these oral cripples!

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 08:57 AM

Irony, Kendall, irony!

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: kendall
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 09:49 AM

I chowda the language on purpose. I do know better, so, it is not coming from ignorance.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Desdemona
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 10:05 AM

Of course, sometimes a complete disregard for the conventions can work brilliantly; think of William Faulkner or James Joyce, had they observed the conventions!

On the other hand, the currently vexing common practice (at least in the US) is the willy-nilly conversion of nouns into verbs: "parenting", "mentoring", etc. Most annoying.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 11:26 AM

Quite right about unrecognizable as a synonym for the irr form. That occurred to me after I had posted it. Dumb.

I gather that the irr form is an eroded way of saying in, with words beginning with r. So it's really "unrecognizable".

Which doesn't do anything to explain irregardless... I think it might be that people sometimes like the sound of a rolled r as a way to emphasise a word, and if you do that to regardless, it can come out as irregardless.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Desdemona
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 11:29 AM

Even worse----occasionally I've actually heard "irregardlessly"!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 01:12 PM

Irrecognizable and unrecognizable both appeared in written form in the 19th C. When they were coined is unknown. The "ir-" in the sense of not goes back at least to the 14th century. "Un-" is probably as old, but I leave the detection to the lexicographers. Thread creep, anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 01:53 PM

My finger slipped in my last post - what I meant to say was that with irr being an eroded in, "irrecognizable" is really a way of writing "inrecognizable."

(And I suppose the dash in that last sentence could be seen as taking the place of a semicolon. Couldn't have been a comma - I suppose it could have been a full stop, at a stretch. I prefer a dash. Looks better on the page.)

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 03:43 PM

Inrecognizable does not yet exist as a word, but if you use it enough, someone will pick it up and run with it- much like our modern word proactive. What is an "eroded" in? Both are honorable prefixes.
"Ir- is the assimilated form in Latin of the prefix in- before initial letter r, used in the same way in English (and much more frequent than in-) in words such as irrational," as well as irrecoverable, irreligion and irrecognizable. OED

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 07 Feb 02 - 03:29 AM

In my country we say "elided", McG!

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 07 Feb 02 - 04:19 AM

Semi-colons in written language are like grace-notes in music, or triples on a drum---[dash!!] ---the meaning of the script, the melody or the rhythm are perfectly whole and functional without them, but not always as pleasing to the eye/ear as when they are judiciously used. Sentences?--One of the most prolific writers alive today truly murders the cherished regulations of the "academics"; have you ever read Stephen King?

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Feb 02 - 08:01 AM

"Ir- is the assimilated form in Latin of the prefix in- before initial letter r, used in the same way in English (and much more frequent than in-) in words such as irrational," as well as irrecoverable, irreligion and irrecognizable. OED

Precisely.

"Elided"? No, that means leaving out a vowel; in this case it's a consonent that's left out. I suppose that dictionary definition above indicates that "assimilated" is the correct technical term. I think "eroded" is a fair enough word to refer to the process by which we knock the rough edges off words that are tricky to pronounce.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 07 Feb 02 - 10:25 AM

Well, ones hates to be pedantic, but elision can apply to consonants or syllables as well as vowels. I have to admit, though, that "erode" is a much more suitable word in this context, or even "corrode"!

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 09:29 AM

McGrath of Harlow said:

My finger slipped in my last post - what I meant to say was that with irr being an eroded in, "irrecognizable" is really a way of writing "inrecognizable."

(And I suppose the dash in that last sentence could be seen as taking the place of a semicolon. Couldn't have been a comma - I suppose it could have been a full stop, at a stretch. I prefer a dash. Looks better on the page.) If you look, there is NO dash in either of those quoted paragraph. What is there in each case is a hyphen with spaces before and after. A dash in printing (referred to as an em dash) is a longer horizontal bar than a hyphen, and is neither led nor followed by a space. In typing, the long dash bar is rendered as two hyphens, with no spaces before or after.

The function of the hyphen is to join two words or word parts into one expression, as in "a dark-green color". The function of the dash, on the other hand, is to separate sections of a sentence--sometimes as a parenthetical indicator, sometimes to indicate a breaking off of a thought.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 11:00 PM

Dealing with this from the academic position can get ridiculous. In writing a thesis or dissertation (here in the US, at any rate) one must follow the style manual to the letter and there are actually people whose job it is to measure margins and look to see if your dash is an "m" in length or if your lines are exactly double-spaced. They aren't looking at the content, mind you, unless perhaps to comment that there are too many personal pronouns. I had to get a note from the chair of my committee to take to the graduate school saying that the number of times "I" appeared in the document was entirely appropriate to the subject. In addition to the style manuals (I usually use the MLA--Modern Language Association) that is used in liberal arts, but have more recently had to switch to the Chicago Manual of Style. And then there's the book by Kate Turabian that is just about writing theses and dissertations. It can take longer to get the darned thing into the proper format than it took to do the original thinking and writing to get the degree!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: 53
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 11:28 PM

Is that the same thing as the small intestine?

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: DMcG
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 02:46 PM

Split infinitives: I read some years ago that in Latin it is impossible to split an infinitive because it is simply part of the way the verb is conjugated. Consequently, splitting infinitives implied you did not appreciate Latin, which in turn implied you were ill-educated. Consequently worrying about split infinitives is no more than snobbishness!

Anyone who is a Latin scholar is entitled to shoot this down :-)

Semicolons are a different matter - they are concerned with the lengths of pauses and changes of voice pitch as sentences start and end - in fact, they change mere words into music!

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 03:52 PM

Stilly River Sage, you didn't add that the style editing continues long after the degree. Different technical journals have different formats. My colleagues and I often would format our papers for a particular journal to save on rewrite. The bibliography was a real pain in the ass, making certain that every colon, semicolon, comma and period was in the right place. And did the journal require italics or quotation marks? Some journals used the style manual from hell; getting the paper into print sometimes was more time-consuming than the research itself.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 04:31 PM

There doesn't seem to be a way of putting in a dash on a keyboard, so a single hyphen is generally used instead. Gimme a dash key, and I'd use it by choice. But not a double hyphen, which is ugly to my eyes.

Subject: RE: BS: Grammar: Use of the semi colon
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Feb 02 - 05:01 PM

­ isn't this–different from this—? (­side by side — –) n dash & m dash, or dash & hyphen...I get either by using a little program called AllChars, which allows access to any character using hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts... æ œ Æ ‡ ¶

it is fun, free and useful