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Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

stilldrinking.org

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Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#51

Post by nightpool »

notduncansmith wrote: post #16
dilap wrote: post #9

Only tangentially related, but it's the weekend, so what the hell, enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g

Knew it before I even clicked the link. They've gone a bit downhill since their first album, but the first (on which this song appears) is a classic.

Are you kidding me? I can pick 3 songs off of Modern Vamps that are better then the whole first album combined. I would admit Contra is a little bit of a hit and miss album, but not incredibly more so then the first one. I mean, who actually listens to I Stand Corrected? Or M79? And Contra gave us Giving Up The Gun, which is probably the second best VW song ever.

(The three songs by the way, if there was any doubt, would be "Hannah Hunt", "Diane Young" and "Hudson" or "Step" depending on taste)

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#52

Post by andolanra »

SheepSlapper wrote: post #44
YokoZar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that sentence a few times now both imposing and not imposing the imaginary comma in my head and it still sounds like either a mistake or a particularly weird choice of rhythm. Without an oxford comma, a four letter list sounds like "This...that...c and d do that!" -- which in turn sounds like naming two things, then making a completely different sentence about the final two things. People don't talk that wa…

I love the Oxford comma, because it leaves no room for ambiguity. I've heard anecdotes of people omitting the comma in contracts and having it come back to bite them in the butt... but who knows if there's any truth in them or not.

Except that the Oxford comma does leave room for ambiguity, c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_comma#Creating_ambiguity

Frankly, with writing in natural languages, hard-and-fast rules like, "Oxford Comma are always unambiguous," and, "Always avoid passives," tend to make your writing weaker, because there are still some cases in which Oxford Commas are ambiguous and passives are the right tool for the job. What makes great writing, whether it be creative writing or contract writing or what-have-you, is knowing when to apply such rules and when to disregard them.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#53

Post by YokoZar »

Istof wrote: post #12
steve_benjamins wrote: post #7

Loved his points about how you can hear punctuation in speech: "Morgan Freeman is liberal with the commas, and Jon Stewart is a master of parentheses. Lewis Black made a career out of the exclamation point while Dennis Leary barely uses any punctuation at all." Overall, a great Sunday morning read.

it's a good point, but isn't that the point of punctuation?

A period is a good point.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#55

Post by jdhzzz »

johnchristopher wrote: post #54

This is really nice to have footnotes just next to the line there are called from[0]. I rarely stumble upon a web page that actually improves on the paper format but this one does. [0] There must be a better way to phrase this.

Completely agree. I first saw this on the Grantland.com site. I loved it the moment I first came across it there.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#56

Post by aclements18 »

johnchristopher wrote: post #54

This is really nice to have footnotes just next to the line there are called from[0]. I rarely stumble upon a web page that actually improves on the paper format but this one does. [0] There must be a better way to phrase this.

Very much agree. Much more natural way to get additional information. I really like how Livefyre is doing something similar with Sidenotes: http://web.livefyre.com/streamhub/#liveSidenotes

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#57

Post by ghaff »

nightpool wrote: post #47
Stratoscope wrote: post #40

Most of the time, you can use the Oxford comma, the non-Oxford comma or any other kind of comma, and it just doesn't make any difference. But sometimes you need it. Here's an example: "There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things, cache expiration, and off-by-one errors." Take out the comma and you ruin the joke - at least to my ears: "There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things,…

The author addresses this: "contrived sentences that mean different things depending on the placement of commas, because this tactic was so successful in fixing that thing that time."

Yes but contrived sentences are bad examples. If you have to carefully parse a sentence's punctuation to come to the correct meaning, the sentence should be rewritten. (Analogous to forcing code maintainers to remember obscure precedence rules to understand your code.)

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#58

Post by groovy2shoes »

talideon wrote: post #41
Bud wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piece also asserted that "word" and "whirred" are "pronounced exactly the same". They aren't. The first consonant is different; IPA [w] vs. IPA [hw].

In a good number of English dialects [w] and [hw] have collapsed together.

Yep, to the point of /hw/ being considered comical by many speakers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_wh#Wine...

Edit: I just want to point out that despite what the map in the linked article says, the merger is complete in most of the urban areas in the Southeast as well. You'll usually only hear /hw/ in rural areas.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#59

Post by centro »

I found this in the source of the page.

The script also called a ruby script to send him a tweet which another script was probably monitoring to text his phone so he could screenshot the text and post to facebook via instagram.

I think the "millenials" - who should be referred to as generation byte - get undeserved flak, as all generations do, for being younger and prettier and living in a different world.

But this kid calling himself a prodigy is a clear indication of way too many gold stars handed out for adequacy, so to ensure that no such abominable script ever does anything besides bomb somebody's twitter account, this comment shows up exactly 50% of the time, and I encourage others to do the same. -->

Found my new favorite blogger; s'cept for PG.

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