Re: Punctuation
No kidding? I don't get letters from Australia. Then there's no wonder you
feel as you do about the other thing! Thanks for the clarification. I see that
it's attempting to share a language that is causing all this grief. We are
often discussing not one language but three or more dialects' conventions.
Yes, this is a major reason why Geoff Hart and I, among other people, keep saying that many punctuation and word choice "rules" are actually conventions and a matter of choice, and that's it's quite appropriate to specify one of the choices as "the way we do it here" -- not because it's a rule of English punctuation or grammar, but for reasons of consistency with a document, a project, or a company.
Indeed, even within one country (such as the USA), there are different conventions or varieties of formal English -- academic style, journalist style, legal style, technical style, several varieties of business style, and so on -- even if you discount the semi-literates and generally bad writing in some of these categories. I think writing for the Web is becoming a distinct style, or at least a substyle of some of the other categories. For example, when writing specifically for the Web, I try to write so that most punctuation isn't needed, on the theory that it's often difficult to see the punctuation marks onscreen. (I have considerable difficulty telling the difference between a full stop (period), comma, semicolon and colon.)
The joys of English-language variety multiply dramatically when you deal with Indian and Singaporean English as well as the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and UK flavours. I enjoy the variety, even while attempting to impose some consistency on a project by editing into a common style. I suspect that people like myself, an expatriate American, may be more aware of international differences within our common language, and less concerned about those differences, than people who haven't been forced to adjust to that difference.
Regards, Jean
Jean Hollis Weber
The Technical Editors' Eyrie http://www.jeanweber.com/
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- Re: Punctuation, Bruce Byfield
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