You may have noticed that I'm a bit of a nerd.
For example: I don't have time to learn as much computer stuff as I'd like (software, programming...), but I have kept my blogger template in html rather than the automated new version. It wasn't hard to figure out just enough code language to customize it enough for my taste. I like a little more control that the more automated new version of Blogger allows.
On the low-tech end of things, I like to get grammar and punctuation right. I am mortified when I look back at old posts on this blog and find clumsy typos. I know this comes from writing, reading quickly and then posting. I never write in a word processing software, take time to edit it carefully, copy it over and then post it. (An in-process future post will be my one exception to this process). I don't know why I'm willing to blog that way. At work, I have been known to ask colleagues to proof-read emails before I send them out. I take writing pretty seriously (when it's not just spilling my brain onto the blog). If someone asks me to proof a document for them, I do it carefully.
Thus, one of my favorite comments to the blog came from Rob regarding my use of a semi-colon in this post. See? I'm a nerd. Well, E'Yoak paid attention to my being all chuffed and sent me this link earlier in the week and noted that it was for Rob, too. I think we're the only people he knows who love a nice bit of punctuation.
edited to correct my poor copy-paste skills. thanks for the tip, Em.
edited to correct "little" typo in first paragraph. Thanks, anon.
5 comments:
Hey Auntly, I think you meant to link to your post, but link to the NYT article twice instead. If I were really trying to be clever here I'd throw in a semi-colon. Rock writers love 'em.
Love the semi-colon personally. When I write reports for the court, my supervisor, who does not share semi-colon love - asks me to take them out - but I have conviction - the semi-colon, properly used, must stay. Ah love that guy.
Oooh, my name on the Internet! I'm always in two minds when it comes to picky syntax rules. I love getting them right, but I also love linguistics books - and they always make it clear that spoken language is the real boss while written language is just a haphazard attempt to hit a moving target. I like knowing how to write like a dead Victorian, but I'm always a bit hesitant to insist that that's 'correct' English. If Shakespeare wasn't using 'bad' English, just an older dialect, and both British and American English are 'correct', though different, then I think it gets difficult to tick off the quarter of a billion English speakers who never use semi-colons. Maybe it's us who are still using Snooty Nineteenth Century English and they're writing Modern English. For anyone who thinks I'm wrong, I realllyy recommend a book called The Power of Babel for making written rules seem arbitrary.
Did you intentionally misspell "little" in the first paragraph? :)
I'm de-lurking myself only to say that when I saw the heading for this post, I thought for SURE it was going to be all about our conversation regarding the correct use of the apostrophe-s.
Our 30 minute conversation.
On a Friday night.
Which resulted in consulting several reference books that could be found in house.
(I like to think the fact we all had drinks in hand makes this a smidge less pathetic!)
-AO
Post a Comment