Today, according to this web site, is National Punctuation Day.
I think I’m pretty good at punctuation, generally. The problem comes with differing styles. For years I eschewed the Oxford Comma, because somebody back in elementary school told me you should never add a comma before the conjunction, as in “I had lunch with Gary, Eric and Denny.” It was only fairly recently that I learned there was any controversy. I learned this while acting as editor of the Journal of the Georg Sverdrup Society. I found out that we follow the Chicago Manual of Style, which mandates the Oxford Comma (“I had lunch with Gary, Eric, and Denny”). The Associated Press is against us, but we don’t follow them. So I learned to love it. Now I can’t imagine doing without it. And that’s good, because we use the APA Manual in graduate school, and they’re Oxfordian as well.
I keep wondering how the American Psychological Association’s style book came to dominate graduate school documentation.
The only other punctuation problem I can think of that I personally struggle with is the way Microsoft Word automatically clumps the three periods in an ellipsis together, turning them into a single, compact idiogram. Which we then have to unclump over at the Sverdrup Journal, because we want our periods separate but equal. I don’t know why. I just do it.
Happy Punctuation Day. Period.
I have been in the habit of breaking up an ellipsis too. I think my English profs encouraged that in college. Sometimes, I wonder if anyone cares.
I wish Word and the web supported directional quotation marks and apostrophes. They look so much nicer than the chopped exclamation point that stands in for an apostrophe.
Academic style books are a exercise and history of Pride and Prejudice. I have had to learn to use a half a dozen different style books during my varied academic life. It is so unnecessary. My worst memory was when I was doing my Gerontology Studies which were primarily Psychology and Sociology courses. I was required to use both APA and ASA style manuals for the appropriate dept. courses. The difference between them were so little to the point of being petty. If I confused them on a paper, it would be returned to me without a grade until I corrected it.
I’m pretty sure that there is a way to tell Word to leave three periods alone. Let’s see now… Yes. It’s in the Autocorrect options.
I feel neglected. Somehow, during my undergraduate studies, which included a Community College, a Vocational Technical Institute, a State College, and a Christian College, I don’t recall ever encountering a style manual. I simply did grammar the way I’d learned it back my primary school and was never challenged until I got to seminary where Lars’s former boss kept telling me to use this Chicago Manual of Style that I’d never heard of before. I got by by doing things the way I’d always done them and changing them whenever my professor indicated I’d made a mistake.
You might enjoy Keith Houston’s punctuation blog, “Shady Characters.” Houston also has a new book, out today: Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks.
The rules for journalism English are not the same as the rules for literary English. The Internet has thrown us all together and it is a toxic brew. Journalism English is predicated on using the least amount of space (also known as money) to say as much as possible. Literary English is a spendthrift.
I have a hunch that this thread is not dealing so much with Journalism English nor Literary English but rather Academic English, which is a horse of a different colour.
On a side note, I have found some interesting tidbits in the blog of Dr. Boli’s friend, The Editor.
http://the-editor.uphero.com/
Greybeard, Academic English is not a horse; it’s something that looks like a camel crossed with a Tasmanian devil, with none of the camel’s or Tasmanian devil’s endearing qualities.