Flutterby™! : To Punctuation, and Beyond!

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To Punctuation, and Beyond!

2011-01-14 19:49:10.375454+00 by petronius 4 comments

To boldly go where no diacritical mark has gone before: The Shatner Comma. As seen in the University of Trantor Book of Style.

[ related topics: Books Education ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-15 04:22:31.308089+00 by: jeff

For the serious minded, "Elements of Style" has always been a favorite.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-16 00:03:23.421841+00 by: TheSHAD0W

/me doubles down with: http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-17 18:55:30.236706+00 by: petronius

Re double spaces: Many years ago I read where the soviet government eliminated the "soft" mark from some of their typography. Appartently in Cyrillic some letters were followed by a "Hard" or "soft" symbol, which changed the meaning of the word. They realized that if it wasn't hard it must be soft, so why bother with two. The proof came when they reset "War and Peace" without the soft mark and came up with 10 fewer pages in the new edition, saving ink and paper. Now, how many bits are wasted by having two spaces?

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-17 20:44:35.713603+00 by: jeff

Some of the most common punctuation errors involve quotation marks.

I do not know the specific exceptions, but in nearly all cases punctuation must go inside the quotation marks:

"No!" Dan said. "It can't be true."

<grin>