Posted by Robert Dilley on December 18, 2003 at 18:17:27 from 216.211.4.46 user rdilley.
In Reply to: Re: Radio Broadcasting - winging it-Eats, Shoots and Leaves posted by Peter H on December 18, 2003 at -1:12:22:
I cannot find the reference now, but I remember reading of an author -- at least a couple of hundred years back I believe -- who published a book with no punctuation in the text; and then added several pages of various forms of punctuation at the end with the exhortation to the readers to add them to the text as they saw fit.
Don't tell this to my students. I don't know that they believe punctuation bourgeois (I doubt if many of them even know the word) so much as irrelevant. Accuracy in expression is only for BOFs like me -- the mantra of the times is "oh, well: you know what I mean" (but so often I don't.)
I should add that this sloppiness of expression is not confined to students. I had an exchange recently with a colleague -- an academic VP no less. He stated that whereas graduate Teaching Assistants had previously "All been funded", now "All will not be funded". When I expressed surprise that funding should have been cut right off, he replied (impatiently) that most would still be funded, and repeated "All will not be funded". When I politely (honestly, I was polite) inquired if he meant "Not all will be funded" I was dismissed with an accusation (not for the first and -- I am sure -- not for the last time) of being a pedant.
I'll end this (pedantic) jeremiad with reference to my pet punctuation peeve -- the intrusive apostrophe. The Apostrophe Protection Society on the web has some wonderful examples of this. I have students (student's?) who insert an apostrophe before virtually every terminal s. My favourite, though, was a graffito I spotted on a roadside boulder between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie: it read, in huge red letters "JOHN LOVE'S JANE" (names have been changed to protect the innocent).
And a Merry Christma's to one and all.