As a word nerd, I like my punctuation in its place and people to spell things, in their first language, the right way.
Just because you understand “there” to mean “their” in context, doesn’t make it correct.
These words may sound the same, but have different meanings.
Similarly, the worst is the abuse of the apostrophe: “Loving all you mom’s’“and “Get your pizza’s on special today!”
There isn’t much of an excuse, really, since my text above is boldly underlined on my screen, courtesy of Microsoft Word, which lets (not “let’s”) even the laziest or most uninformed scribe know that something is wrong.
I’m more of an “intuitive” writer than a seasoned grammar Nazi.
I don’t know a heck of a lot about grammar — and I even use informal, casual words to get my point across (“heck”).
I couldn’t unpack participles and things from a sentence if asked — I just know what “looks” right and what doesn’t.
But change can be good.
And it’s (not “its”) for this reason that I wasn’t upset by an announcement regarding the probable death of the full stop, or period, in my lifetime.
University of Wales linguistics professor David Crystal has suggested that this “full stop signal”, which we all learn as children and which has been used since the Middle Ages, is gradually dying an honourable death.
Speaking to New York Times reporter Dan Bilefsky, Crystal said technology — instant messaging in the digital age — was making the full stop pretty much obsolete.
“In an instant message, it is pretty obvious a sentence has come to an end, and none will have a full stop ... so why use it?”
This would bother me if that was the end of the story: it lived, it died and we shall now have a mixed bag of confused sentences, sans pauses, thanks to our frenzied new attitude to communication.
But, that’s not the end of the story. In fact, the full stop hasn’t died; it’s just put on a new coat.
“The period is being deployed as a weapon to show irony, syntactic snark, insincerity, even aggression,” he said.
For example, using a full stop in an instant message after “fine”, when your lover has just cancelled on you and ruined an hours-to-prepare, six-course dinner, shows annoyance.
In the old days, it just meant that you had ended a sentence.
Paradoxically, over-punctuation seems to be replacing the full stop, he says.
And it’s true — have you ever seen a WhatsApp between women friends without at least three exclamation marks to drive a point home?
Much like the way we cackle and whoop together in coffee shops — but just by phone.
The more things change, the more they stay the same (!!!).
HeraldLIVE