> 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!

Yeah, they tule. Except that you're not supposed to use more than one of them.



> 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...

Parentheses are supposed to be like this (see? [like this (it goes parenthesis-bracket-parenthesis-bracket-etc.)]). You usually don't need to punctuate inside a parenthetical clause (I made "parenthetical clause" up. I hope it's a real phrase) unless you would put in an exclamation mark or a question mark. Parenthetical clauses should be placed inside a sentence. If they are at the end of the sentence, you do it like this:
Bob married Barb (she was a cute tall redhead).


(in Arial, a lowercase "i" looks rather like that Spanish inverted exclamation point, incidentally)

That's why I use Comic Sans MS. Also you can tell the difference between l and I.


> 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...).

Oh dear. That's bad grammar. You would say "I dreamed" or "I have dreamt", but not "I dreamt" or "I have dreamed" (well, the last one is kind of iffy these days, but still wrong). The same with other words that are of the -t/-ed variety. Also, "I've got" is incorrect. It's supposed to be "I've gotten", because the "I have" tense of "to get" is "has gotten". So there. Well, this rule only pertains in American English, but so what.


>Likewise I much prefer the doubled "l" of words such as "travelling" to the singled.

The single "l" rule, as far as I can remember, is only in the word "traveling" (although I' think it's in some others, but I can't remember), and in non-America places of Earth they use two L's.

>Am still ambivalent regarding the British/American -our/-or endings, but prefer "z" to "s" in words such as "realize".

I prefer American spellings of words. I'm an American. Sometimes I will use British words, though. Americans who use American spellings except for -re need to be smacked. I get irritated when I'm walking around here (norhtern San Diego County) and I see someone has put up a sign advertising their theatre. It's theater. Schmucks.

>And I like my punctuation outside my quotation marks unless it's got good reason to be in there!

Certain times punctuation is supposed to be outside the quotation marks and other times it has to be inside, so I tend to keep it outside unless it's dialogue (that's a British spelling, but I think it looks better anyway, so I use it. One interesting thing I learned is, when using quotation marks inside quotation marks, the numbering of apostrophes differs.

"Bob said 'Jill said '''Quack!''' to him' to me."

I have no idea what you would do if you had to go further into quotes. I'm a bit scared to see a sentence that would do that, actually.

> 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...

I am also a compulsive proofreader. I like to write, and so do my two closest friends, and often when we write stuff we give it to each other to read, and I always feel like taking a big red pen to their work, because, although they are great writers, they make many small spelling and grammar mistakes.


>I've a good article on that by Anne Fadiman...

-gasp- I love when people use "I've" when the "have" they are contracting is the possessive "have", not the past perfect "have". You TULE.


-eric "obsessive" sleator
Sun 16 Apr A.D. 2000