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I say its obsolete Phil because we are perfectly able to understand the meaning of a word without being spoon feed. Maybe I should have said redundant instead but anyway, as words are meant to communicate and not to be used as a tool to judge people, I have no problem with dropping the apostrophe. If in doubt of my meaning, you are free to ask me and I will happily explain. 

In saying that though, when I was required to to turn in a paper for my degree I was careful not to circumvent the rules of diction and used complicated sentence structures and perfect grammatical form other wise I would have lost marks. 

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We are also perfectly able to understand what's meant when someone writes 'there' instead of 'their', and 'then' intead of 'than', because of the context, but it still bad/wrong spelling, and is indicative of, or at least gives the impression of, poor learning.

I should add that each of our brains is better at somethings than others. For instance, most of us cannot paint works of art, but some can. Most of us cannot play musical instruments very well, but some can. And so on. Conversely, most of us learn to spell well enough, but it eludes some people. Most of us learn grammar well enough, but it eludes some people. None of it is necessarily an indication of the person, but some of it could be. To me, rightly or wrongly, poor grammar and poor spelling is an indication of a person's intellect.

P.S. I expected some flack from my post but, instead, you 'Liked' it :)

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I don't follow grammatical rules because they are rules.  I follow them because they make my writing easier to understand -- by me and by other people who follow the same conventions.  When I read things written by people who never learned how apostrophes work, or people who don't know the difference between "there" and "their", the errors distract me from what they are trying to say.  I would never deliberately distract another reader like that myself.  When I make a mistake, it's an honest-to-goodness typo or a flash of insanity, not a disregard for good writing.

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1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

I don't follow grammatical rules because they are rules.  I follow them because they make my writing easier to understand -- by me and by other people who follow the same conventions.  When I read things written by people who never learned how apostrophes work, or people who don't know the difference between "there" and "their", the errors distract me from what they are trying to say.  I would never deliberately distract another reader like that myself.  When I make a mistake, it's an honest-to-goodness typo or a flash of insanity, not a disregard for good writing.

Cormac McCarthy's writing, esp The Road (a contender for my all time favorite book), has been a revelation to me. Here is one of many articles about his minimalist punctuation, and why it does not make his meaning less clear. I found it not at all distracting, and in fact contributed to the overall message of the book.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/cormac-mccarthys-punctuation-rules.html

Made a believer out of me.

Edited by Pamela Galli
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A few people like Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard can pull off the trick of sparse writing cleanly.  I share your admiration for their skill, Pam (although I have to admit that I have never enjoyed reading their work, for other reasons). As far as I can tell, most people who stray from conventional grammar do it out of ignorance or laziness. Language and conventions of grammar evolve.  They should.  Until a convention like the apostrophe disappears by common agreement, though, people who push at the frontiers of change by ignoring it run the risk of distracting and confusing the rest of us.

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5 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Elmore Leonard! He is my favorite! These two writers have spoiled me for non minimalists. As soon as I read something about the sunlight through the leaves being like golden butterflies on a spring morning... I stop. 

De gustibus non est disputandem.  9_9 

Butterfly.jpg

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6 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Cormac McCarthy's writing, esp The Road (a contender for my all time favorite book), has been a revelation to me. Here is one of many articles about his minimalist punctuation, and why it does not make his meaning less clear. I found it not at all distracting, and in fact contributed to the overall message of the book.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/cormac-mccarthys-punctuation-rules.html

Made a believer out of me.

@Pamela Galli. Then you're easily led ;)

Quoting from that article - 'Speaking of writers who have imitated him, he says, “You really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks, and write in such a way as to guide people as to who’s speaking.” Otherwise, confusion reigns.'

In other words, if you choose not to use quotation marks, as you said you do, Pam, then you have to contrive ways of putting sentences together so that all readers will most likely understand that it's a quotation at first reading, and the chances are that, more often than not, you won't achieve it, even if the failure is merely a split second to ensure that it's being understood correctly - a quick second take. You'll also cause people to assume that you are less learned that you really are. How much easier it is to simply use quotation marks, and forget those silly ideas ;)

Fortunately, of course, people like those mentioned are unable to change the general punctuation to their own idiotic ideas, because they have such a very limited audience, and no doubt a large part of their audience think they are being silly.

As a forum population, what do we think of those occasional people who write whole posts without any full stops (periods), and often without capitalising the first characters of sentences? If I'm anything to go by, we think they're a bit thick. It's the same with poor or bad puctuation, only less so. Punctuation doesn't have to be perfect. Often it can't be, because things like commas are placed according to the writer's desires. There are very few hard and fast rules concerning them. But other punctuation does have rules and, when they are generally not adhered to, it speaks about the person. At least it does to me.

I just wrote, "because things like commas are placed according to the writer's desires."  If you had written it, you would have written "because things like commas are placed according to the writers desires." - no apostrophe - and nobody could have known what you meant. Would you have meant a single writer or multiple writers? Nobody could know. In no way are apostrophes obsolete or redundant. Anyone who says differently, and there are two of you here, is simply wrong. Of course, you could have written, "because things like commas are placed according to the desires of the one who is writing.", but that would be silly. I'm sure we can always write in convoluted ways, so that an apostrophe isn't actually needed, but it's stupid to refuse to use it, because it's so useful.

I'm sorry, Pam, but imo, nobody in their right mind would refuse to use certain punctuation marks on some sort of silly principle that they aren't needed.

Edited by Phil Deakins
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1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

@Pamela Galli. Then you're easily led ;)

Quoting from that article - 'Speaking of writers who have imitated him, he says, “You really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks, and write in such a way as to guide people as to who’s speaking.” Otherwise, confusion reigns.'

In other words, if you choose not to use quotation marks, as you said you do, Pam, then you have to contrive ways of putting sentences together so that all readers will most likely understand that it's a quotation at first reading

Agreed. Here is an excerpt from the Pulitzer winning The Road: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/read-an-excerpt-from-the-road-by-cormac-mccarthy

Obviously there are uses for quotation marks and apostrophes, just not as many as we were all taught, as the excerpt makes clear. 

I taught writing for 20 years and do understand that the purpose of written conventions is to make the meaning clear, to enable the reader to hear the voice of the writer. 

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@Pamela Galli

I'm not going to read the excerpt that you linked to, Pam, because there is no reason to.

We already have punctuation conventions. They are extremely quick and easy to use, and they work perfectly in getting understanding across. I can think of only one reason to drop any of them, which I'll come to further down. Dropping a few means having to write in convoluted ways, which is a lot less quick to do, and a lot more prone to not being understood correctly. It's that simple. Use them and make writing easier to do and understand, or don't use them and make writing less easy to do and risk being misunderstood.

The single exception that I can think of is when the writer isn't sure about how to use certain punctuation marks, and so it is better to write in a convoluted way, and avoid the need. That can come about through poor education for whatever reason, or a blind spot in the brain - an area that we never seem to manage to fully get a grip of. I think we all have blind spots for something or other, and puctuation seems like a likely candidate to be one.

In summary, apart from that single exception, there is absolutely no need, or any sensible reason, to drop any punctuation marks, and there is very definitely good reason not to.

 

9 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Obviously there are uses for quotation marks and apostrophes,

Oh. So you're back-tracking now. Earlier you said that you don't use either of those puctuation marks. Or do you mean that you don't use them even though there are actual uses for them? If that's the case, then you don't use them as a matter of principle, and not as a matter of good sense. It's obvious that puctuation works perfectly well, so dropping any of it makes no sense at all. It just means that things need to be convoluted, or risk being misunderstood. See? There is no sense at all in dropping things that work perfectly, in favour of things that don't work as well.

Heck, you don't think or speak in ways that don't need puctuation when written, so why write any differently? You say things like, "I'm off to the shop", and not, "I am off to the shop". So why not write the way you think and speak? Or maybe you would write, "Im off to the shop" and be seen as someone who either does typos or is lacking in some education. "Im" isn't a word and is immediately pronounced with the i as in hill, and not i sounding like eye. It needs a quick flash of understanding to realise that it's suppose to mean 'I am', which, of course, interrupts the flow.  I'm sorry, Pam, but your backward step makes no sense at all.

 

Incidentally, I'm sure that the Pulitzer Prize was for its content and not for its punctuation, so keeping on mentioning the Pulitzer Prize, in the futile hope that the respectablity that goes with the Pulitzer Prize will somehow magically transfer to the author's idiotic ideas about punctuation, doesn't work, Pam ;)

Edited by Phil Deakins
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12 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

Quoting from that article - 'Speaking of writers who have imitated him, he says, “You really have to be aware that there are no quotation marks, and write in such a way as to guide people as to who’s speaking.” Otherwise, confusion reigns.'

The author would be much more convincing had they written this without using quotation marks.

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17 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

That's okay, there was no reason to read your post either. :SwingingFriends:

Oh but there was. The link you provided went to a page from a book. You wanted me to read some fiction that doesn't use much puctuation - a demo - and there was no point in doing that. On the other hand, my post only addressed what you and I are discussing. Y'know, the actual mini-topic within this thread. But it's interesting to note that you have no rational reply to what I wrote, so you avoided it by saying something silly. That's pretty much typical when a person has nothing to counter with, so I can understand you doing it.

 

ETA: And, of course, I did read your post. All of it. I even followed the link you provided, read the first couple of lines, and saw what it was - a demo of fiction, written without certain punctuation. Anyone can write like that if they want to. It's not exactly a skilled art. So it really was pointless me reading it. It's a shame that you couldn't show me the same courtesy that I showed you, and read my post, which was written specifically for you.

Having said that, I believe you did read it all, and that you chose not to reply to its content because you have no convincing arguments, perhaps other than that you disagree.

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As I read the article about McCormik McCarthy's punctuation, it seems he is not opposed to the over use of punctuation marks, so much as the complicated sentences structures that Neo-Classical authors used to express themselves. I vaguely recall reading some horrible works of philosophy where sentences ran on and on, with sub-clause after sub-clauses defining and further refining a concept to the point where instead of clarity confusion reigned. So I have a lot of sympathy with that.

Punctuation and the use of clauses do have their place, without them it just is not possible to express ourselves so elegantly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby opens up into a series of abstract phrases.

Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Or from Virginia Woolf:

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the water of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm-chair and confuse his “Rinse the Mouth —- rinse the mouth” with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us – when we think of this, as we are frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

James Joyce, who McCormik McCarthy cites as an inspiration wrote a 26 page solliquay for Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses that uses just two sentences and no other punctuation, it works as a stream of consciousness, adding in punctuation to a sentence like that would perhaps change its intended impact?

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm#link2HCH0018

Reading it and thinking about it. the Ulysses example illustrates to me why puntuation is needed, To unentangle the stream of consciousness written I have to punctuate it myself, to work out how the words are supposed to fit together. To get sense and meaning out of it. Its overall effect is disorienting and confusing, which is perhaps its intention?

I don't know. English grammar is a confusing topic and I am a long way from being an expert.

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On 02/07/2017 at 8:03 PM, Phil Deakins said:

P.S. I expected some flack from my post but, instead, you 'Liked' it :)

Of course I 'liked' it. I believe people have a right to say what they think and I like a discussion. We dont have to agree for me me to appreciated your point of view. 

PS....hope you can read through the 'errors'. 

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On 7/2/2017 at 6:03 AM, Phil Deakins said:

To me, rightly or wrongly, poor grammar and poor spelling is an indication of a person's intellect.

Of course most of this is cultural bias. I am sure there have been those who thought that anyone who couldn't ride a horse was a complete idiot. But today very few have the slightest clue about horses, because technology has advanced and horses have been largely replaced. The fact is that already many teachers don't think learning to spell is very important, because everything is written on a computer with spell check anyway. (I have heard some of my kids teachers actually say this) 

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8 minutes ago, Talligurl said:

(I have heard some of my kids teachers actually say this) 

That is one very sad commentary.  Spelling isn't just about memorizing the correct combination of letters to make a word. Good spellers think about the words themselves.  Words carry clues to meaning that depend on understanding where their roots come from (Why aren't "rhinoceros and "tyrannosaurus" spelled the same way?).  Puns and double entendres invite playfulness, but so much of the fun depends on knowing that a word, when misspelled, can have a different meaning ("Grin and bear it" or "Grin and bare it"?).  Studying spelling can lead to a deeper understanding of cultural history ( What does a "suffragette" have to do with suffering?  What were the "Gay" Nineties?)   In a purely practical way, good spelling can save you from the embarrassment of trusting the spell checker to know that you hope to "attract" the girl next door, not "attack" her.  Like so many of the other basic things we learn in school, spelling is only partly about getting the letters in the right order.  It's also about hearing what your language says to you, appreciating its nuances, and using it to express yourself clearly. Letting computers keep track of our spelling isn't as trivial a decision as giving up riding horses and wearing petticoats.

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32 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Letting computers keep track of our spelling isn't as trivial a decision as giving up riding horses and wearing petticoats.

Maybe, maybe not, which is not to diminish the seriousness of forgetting how to spell as much as to elevate the seriousness of forgetting how to ride horses. We never really stop to ask, what are we giving up when technology rolls forward and leaves old ways crushed in it's wake. We collectively operate on faith that any damage done by technology today will be corrected by technology in the future. Conveniently ignoring the possibility that the future social damage will be even worse, and that we are in the big picture destroying our selves with our toys. Sure all along the way there are those who suggest that this would be a good place to stop, but they are dismissed as a bunch of paranoid Luddites, and no one ever really listens, and the machine keeps rolling forward.

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It sounds as if we are not far apart.  As a scripter in SL and, in another life, a scientist, I appreciate both the benefits and the risks of technology.  I cannot afford to be a Luddite, letting fear of advancing technology keep me from embracing the advantages that are coming with it.  It worries me deeply, however, when I see people using technology as an excuse for not doing the hard work of thinking for themselves.  Machines may do math faster and more reliably than I can, but I know what I am doing. A machine can check my spelling and get the words right, but I understand the words.   A machine does not.  "Komputer tut was er weiss; mench weiss was er tut."  We will face the growing complexities of life better because we have created machines to help us, not because we give machines our responsibility for thinking.

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