“The cure for boredom is curiousity. There is no cure for curiousity.”*
~ Dorothy Parker
I so enjoy And Sometimes Y. I was checking their website for a past show to stream when I realized I was only 6 minutes away from the live Monday re-airing of their Saturday show. That made me so happy (<-it’s very easy to make me happy).
Discussions of punctuation are very interesting to me — in part because I am so hedged in the conversation. There are extremely salient points to be made in defense of the enforcing the grammatical status quo. There are also extremely salient points to be made in defense of language as a dynamic, constantly evolving, shifty, masterless creature. I love sticklers, and while I have less love for the txt msgrs and experimental literarians, I also understand the need not to suffocate your communication in punctiliousness.
Though I always find one of the repeat arguments confusing (used both for and against correct grammar use). The argument is that emails are /never/** properly punctuated. Never? Whatthe? Mine are almost unfailingly properly punctuated. As are most of the emails I receive. I’m not saying that it’s perfection in my in and outboxes: sentence fragments abound and word usages are frequently and unabashedly bastardized. But there are commas and periods, full sentences, greetings, and closers. As there should be.
There’s a fair amount of grandstanding among sticklers. Not all sticklers stickle in private, and many are more intent on seeking out violators to prove their point than they are interested in setting a good example. As opposed to some of us mini-sticklers who mis-type an “its” in an IM window, and it makes a little muscle by our eye twitch in horror.
Ille dolet vere, qui sine teste dolet***
*If you’re quoting an American, should you use American English spellings?
**Interesting too that they were discussing (briefly) the use of punctuation marks in graphic design. Which makes me smirk when I look at my use of asterisks and forward slashes. Though in the case of this blog, my use of the forward slash has nothing to do with design, and everything to do with WordPress’s default use of (and conversion of the <i> tag to) the <em> tag for italics. Which actually translates to <b>, which makes my head explode. Though I’m usually too lazy to go through the code every time I save.
***He mourns honestly who mourns without witnesses. (Martialis)