I'd really like to meet Nelson Mandela the 800-year-old demi-god and dildo collector, he seems fun 
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If you see something written with en-dashes and em-dashes, you know it involved artificial intelligences competent writers and editors.
I like to put U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE between numbers and units, such as:
2,345 mi
3.95 kg
25.7 °C
These diminutive slivers add just enough space between numbers and letters to make them easier to read, but still keep them together.
I also like to use the script ℓ for liters to keep it legible.
1.0 gal ≈ 3.79 ℓ
Spaces around en-dashes, or no?
This is a delicious tribute to the sensual semi-colon. Enjoy!
"Witness this gorgeous specimen by Christopher Marlowe, in ‘Hero and Leander’:
Come thither; As she spake this, her toong tript.
For vnawares (Come thither) from her slipt.
And sodainly her former colour chang’d.
And here and there her eies through anger rang’d.
That slight, erotic pause after the first ‘thither’; it’s heavenly."
#words #punctuation #writing
Reading a university style guide that recommends "eleven year-old children".
This does not mean what they think it means, but on the plus side it could lead to some wildly amusing data.
I don't think any punctuation marks need protecting, by the way. The Apostrophe Protection Society, for example, is a dogmatic organisation with an appetite for shaming people and no apparent understanding of the apostrophe's diverse history and continuing mutability.
Punctuation patterns ebb and flow and change with the times. If people see the need for a particular mark, they'll keep using it.
In all the recent fuss over the semicolon's apparent decline (see e.g. https://theconversation.com/semicolons-are-becoming-increasingly-rare-their-disappearance-should-be-resisted-257019 ), I've seen no mention of Cecelia Watson's book, which I reviewed here: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/book-review-semicolon-by-cecelia-watson/
Decline in semicolon usage, and thank goodness, not least because people generally don't know how to use them correctly.
I try to get my non-native English-speaking colleagues to cut down on their use and to please do not use them in bullet lists.
"Too academic for our purposes!" I say.
Although a careful, considered semicolon, a literary semicolon, I can get behind.
Punctuation is the writers only natural enemy
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Our writer long avoided exclamation points. Then, the pandemic hit and the lively punctuation became a signal flare in a cold, gray sea. Now he loves their zing! Their fizz! Their pop! #punctuation #grammar
Posted into Commentary @commentary-csmonitor
Grammarly: we miss you! Did you take a writing break?
me: it's not you, it's my new IT department won't allow #Grammarly and Microsoft Editor sucks donkey balls; I guess having proper #spelling, grammar and #punctuation in our product #documentation isn't a priority here at InniTrobe.
And Michael Tomasello's book "Origins of Human Communication" has a sentence 261 words long that's more intelligible than many sentences one tenth its length.
Clarity hinges on structure and sense, and his line uses 11 semicolons – here, the right choice – to form a precisely executed parallelism.
There are exceptions. Halfway through Patrick deWitt's first novel "Ablutions" is a sentence 207 words long that made me want to stand and cheer.
Not to be all leave-it-to-the-pros, but you do need to have certain skills to attempt a sentence of such length and hope to keep readers firmly on track.
Sometimes four short sentences are better than a single 140-word behemoth built with creaky semicolons and sticky tape.
While the Supreme Court’s politics have veered right, the court’s language has gotten surprisingly progressive. Justices now use contractions, casual language, and personal pronouns to make their opinions more accessible to the public. https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-is-unabashedly-liberal-in-its-writing-style-245503 #grammar #scotus #punctuation
Maybe I should respond to Currys pointing out the spelling and punctuation errors in their poster.
Currys are a large electrical retailer in the UK.
Some writers profess to love semicolons, but if they're using them in place of colons then it's not true love
This Hallo'ween, I'm a misplaced apostrophe
I'm in punctuation hell today, editing a story that in part compares the Old Farmer's Almanac and the Farmers' Almanac.
That's how the two names have been punctuated for more than 200 years.
Here's the real conundrum: "These are the two leading f_____ almanacs."
