> As I sat here, I realized that there is absolutely nothing that I want for the time being. I've had a long day, so I also wondered: Is this contentment or listlessness? Also, isn't "listlessness" highly repetitive and boring to spell? Finally, shouldn't the subject be "Dictional," rather than "Syntactical?" Oh, and "fluid" isn't a very fluid word, nor is "onomotopoeia" onomotopoeia. Shouldn't "renege" be pronounced "ree-nezh' " in English? What is the plural of "picnic" in Spanish? An earlier thread talked about metricizing various things, what about language? Then again, author David Brin makes a strong case for letting language "deteriorate" even more. Now that I've changed topics several times, I think I'll begin a new paragraph.
>
> What do you think about invented languages such as Esperanto and Volapuk or even the almost-completely-regular Turkish, versus our own chaotic tongue? I personally like the irregularity of English, and would use "dreamt" over "dreamed" anytime, or "yclept" over "cleped," or "dove" over "dived." I like the Anglic forms much better than the Latinate, and much prefer "feckless" over "ineffectual."
>
> Now that I'm nowhere near where I began, I'll stop and leave it to you to reply however you may.
>
> gab"hmmm... no ideas"by

Continuing the ramble (might as well) - I love semicolons. Few things thrills me more than finding out that a writer has a proper command of and appreciation for semicolons; they have a nice non-terminal feel to them; they titillate (now there's a word that's much cleaner than it sounds like it should be, like "rectify"); they promise: but wait, there's more!

Parentheses are good too (I use them quite often (but you'd noticed (maybe you hadn't; I haven't posted here that much yet (and there was another semicolon! (in Arial, a lowercase "i" looks rather like that Spanish inverted exclamation point, incidentally (is there a technical name for that?); amusing to play with (hey, another semicolon!).)) but I rather like it here (should I punctuate inside these or not? I guess I will if it calls for it.), so I guess I'll stay)? (and should the punctuation be before a more deeply nested parenthetical or afterward? Hmm, I guess that depends too.)), especially since all my thoughts tend to be parenthetical anyhow. I think I kept all of those straight...

I think the -t past tense ending is much nicer than -ed; it reminds me of all those fantasy stories, and a favorite song (I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls...). Likewise I much prefer the doubled "l" of words such as "travelling" to the singled. Am still ambivalent regarding the British/American -our/-or endings, but prefer "z" to "s" in words such as "realize". And I like my punctuation outside my quotation marks unless it's got good reason to be in there!

I am also a compulsive proofreader; I've a good article on that by Anne Fadiman, which I shall HTMLize (such coinages are fine by me) shortly and then link to, if anyone is interested. Or even if no one is. For as you can probably see, I have way too much time on my hands...

-Fob"very prone to rambling"ulis