Punctuation infuriation

[Malpass93]

From the Lynch Guide to Grammar and Style:

Contrary to what your high school English teacher told you, there's no reason not to begin a sentence with but or and; in fact, these words often make a sentence more forceful and graceful. They are almost always better than beginning with however or additionally. Beginning with but or and does make your writing less formal; — but worse things could happen to most writing than becoming less formal.

Note, though, that if you open with but or and, you usually don't need a comma: not "But, we did it anyway"; it's enough to say "But we did it anyway." The only time you need a comma after a sentence-opening conjunction is when you want to sneak a clause right between the conjunction and the rest of the sentence: "But, as you know, we did it anyway." [Entry revised 12 July 2005.]

I was taught to indent paragraphs. When was the last time you saw one?

My experience is that grammar and style are things which evolve very quickly, given how much the rules have changed since I was at school. Perhaps the explosion of email and text messaging are to blame for a large part of that.

They haven't changed that much, as I was certainly taught to never start a sentence with "and" or "but", and I'm still at school.

[Nick Harvey]

But I use semicolons quite frequently.

And you can't indent paragraphs on here. I tried, but the software strips the leading spaces off, just like it changes all my double spaces between sentences into single ones.

[Finn]

But I use semicolons quite frequently.

But not in that post.

*sobs*

[Gavin Scott]

I was taught to indent paragraphs. When was the last time you saw one?

My experience is that grammar and style are things which evolve very quickly, given how much the rules have changed since I was at school. Perhaps the explosion of email and text messaging are to blame for a large part of that.

Indentation was considered "old hat" when I took my O Grade in Secretarial Studies. That was, umm... 1987, I think. Everything was to be left-aligned, including the both the recipient's and your own address on a letter. That one seemed odd to me, as I was used to all kinds of fussy formatting up to that point.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was the only boy in the class; but that didn't bother me. I got to learn lithographic printing, touch typing, shorthand and the machinations of early PBX switchboards.

All very useful stuff at the time (bearing in mind it was 20 years ago) for the various jobs which followed.

[Nick Harvey]

So what's the concensus over the number of spaces between sentences then?

I've always been a double space man, myself, but as I mentioned earlier, it's impossible to tell on here.

[Finn]

So what's the concensus over the number of spaces between sentences then?

I always understood that to be a pre-computer typewriter/typographical thing (I seem to recall it was down to monospaced fonts, to make it clearer for the reader, something which isn't necessary with modern font display.

[Finn]

Couple of interesting articles here on the issue:

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespac ... spaces.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_spacing

[Nick Harvey]

So it looks like double spacing is out of date.

Seems ideal for me, then!

[Mr Q]

I'm happy to use colons, although I have less of a place for semicolons in my writing. Usually its role gets reduced to little more than an alternative for a comma. Which brings me to my big problem in writing: I overuse commas. I have a nasty habit of marking out dependent clauses - something I got used to doing in my studies of German, which I carried back across to English. Sometimes it can be useful to make the meaning of a sentence more clear, yet when a sentence ends up having four of fives commas in it, I'm not sure that's indicative of efficiency in the writing.

[Gavin Scott]

So it looks like double spacing is out of date.

Single on a justifying typewriter (remember those?), double on a non-justifying one typewriter to aid clarity.

That's another thing they taught me.

Gosh, that O Grade is the gift that just keeps on giving.

[cwathen]

Why don't people use colons or semi-colons any more?

When I did my GCSE English in the late 90's our teacher seemed to want to banish them from living memory; any use of a colon or semi colon would result in the work coming back with the offending punctuation crossed out and the structure reworked to use only commas and full stops.

I was taught to indent paragraphs. When was the last time you saw one?

Paragraph separation was another bone of contention in late primary/early secondary school. Some teachers would declare that a paragraph break is indicated by a blank line. Others would expect a blank line and a 1 inch indentation on the new paragraph. Another will always stick in my mind as wanting an indentation *only* to mark a new paragraph (explicitly barking out 'you don't need to leave a line' to anyone who dared to structure anything the same way as other teachers expected).

Couple that to having to remember 6 different ways to format the date depending on which class you were in, it's a wonder the we found time to learn anything at school beyond the whims of how various teachers expected you to present things.