> > 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.

Usually, that is, but they *can* be used repeatedly in lists of items, in which some items already include divisions by commas. Observe:

I would like to thank the managing director, Jennifer Dunbar; my secretary, Raymond Martin; and my assistant, Danid Singh.


> >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.

I often use British spellings for one word, such as "colour", but I wouldn't doubt that I miss some of the alternately-spelled words. I feel that they look better, and I am not an American. People who use them simply to make themselves sound more cultured is a little lame, though.

> >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.
>

In the sparce number of books that I've read where quotations run deeper than two levels (the only one which I can remember off hand was a Shelock Holmes novel, and I can't even remember the name) the number of apostrophes simply alternate between two and one.

"'"Help!" he screamed,' was the only thing I could get out of him."

In Britain they often use the single-apostrophe quotation marks first, but I have had too much exposure to the doubles-first rule to do that without reminding myself.

Burger"'Grammar and syntax!' I cheered."King