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I would have rather written the quote as
“The quick brown fox had jumped over two million lazy dogs.”, he said.
What's inside the quote is literally quoted...

I had to read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves for summer reading. Lots of punctuation rules and stuff in that book.
Unfortunately, the author was British, and used the rules for British English throughout.
Fortunately, the differences aren't that abundant, and she made note of any American English differences. Which was nice.

I also remember reading a small article on the English language for homework a few days ago. It discussed the existence of changes that the language goes through, and how it's only natural that things happen to it. Though I can't remember exactly and now you people are going to make me go and reread it. >=(



However, none of this is to say I'm particularly glad about all the horrible language use in places where people are simply too lazy to do anything about it.

Yeah, Kakurady. No matter how we jumble it unless we do it that way, something becomes awkward. I see your point, avwolf, I can accept that rule. It doesn't give me complete logical satisfaction, though. :D

Btw. Did you hear Mr. Gorgon say "are pies amazing?"? :D~


Unless you actually use it when talking to women, I suppose?

I loved that book, I had to read it too. I love grammar so it was easy reading. I never knew so much about the semicolon, either. The book had some really funny parts in it too.

I'd quote the book right now if I could remember anything. XD

Right now I'm taking a "History of the English Language" course (Eng 388) that's focusing with the development of English from Old English to Modern. It sounds boring, but it's ungodly interesting. Very cool how you see the language evolve and mutate when it's isolated for lengths of time.

Oh, that's a great class! Didja have to read any from Beowulf, or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles? Good reads, those...
X3

We're tinkering with the Canterbury Tales but reading the literature isn't a huge part of the class like most english courses are. This one actually studies the way languages work, how they developed, and sometimes with an occasional example from literature.

IMO i think you may be taking it a bit seriously, but i dont blame you.

i actually use punctuation when i need to, for names and titles mostly. but that's only when i dont have a self correcting program to speed my posting up. if there was a program on here that would automatically capitalize things when they're supposed to be capitalized, i would. i only type the post, capitalizing names when i come to them, and then post it.

when it comes to english class, or making a story, i wont hesitate to capitalize, ALL of the appropriate words. i wont make a piece of literature look sloppy, that would make things less interesting for the readers.

So, Raphael, what's the distinction between forums and "literature," by that I mean your stories or classes? What line is drawn between them that one group benefits from less "sloppy" writing and the other receives writing which is "less interesting," to use your own words?

I agree with Av, while forums are meant to be more fun than classical homes of the language, you're still trying to convey some sense of understanding. What I mean is you don't want to be saying "hyuk" every post right? In the comic section you try and add meaningful contributions to thoughts about the direction of the story, yes? Just because we're in a less formal setting shouldn't give you the green light to ignore everything completely. People need help understanding what you want to communicate, and the best method for that is punctuation and grammar.... Though I guess in the end it's more of a courtesy than anything.

ok, you have a point.

i mean that on forum discussions, and in the RP boards, i only resort to capitalizing when a name or title comes up. if it was an actual writing piece, like an essay, or a one person story, i'd make sure to use proper spelling and grammar to catch the reader's eye more.

i said i can understand what Fast means because many people are slightly OCD about spelling and grammar, i dont blame him for wanting other people to stick with proper grammar. hell, i live around a bunch of morons that use lingo like "nah mean" when they mean "you know what i mean. and "what's goodie" when they mean what's good?" or "what's going on?" you know...rap fanatics, i hate those people. you can hardly understand them if you dont share the same interests, or dont hang a lot of time around them...which i try to avoid. at least i use proper language when i can, i just dont use proper spelling as much when it comes to capitalizing specific words.

While the comment was a more or less rhetorical criticism, I also am curious about the question on its face. I suspect Raphael's opinions to be shared by many -- when it "counts," things like school assignments and recreational stories, a great deal more effort is invested in ensuring proper language use, while more "conversational" circumstances, like instant messengers and the forums (I am going to exclude game chat and texting which have other reasons for "sloppier" writing; not every game facilitates carrying on conversations as well as WoW or a MUD does), the rules they hold themselves to are significantly more lax. So I'm curious what the precise distinction is, the reason behind the choice between "neat" and "sloppy" writing in a given circumstance. What makes a forum post particularly different from a short story for the case of grammatical precision? If we understand the reasoning behind it, perhaps we can turn it on its head or take advantage of it to improve or maintain language usage in our little corner of the Internet.

-- I will agree --
That in fairness, you do write in complete, sensible setences, Raphael, you merely do not capitalize all the words correctly. Spelling is far less of a concern in general to me, provided you can be understood; so most words are spelled properly and it's only unusual ones or otherwise difficult words which get misspelled. That's really not so bad. I have a friend who spells everything phonetically, which wouldn't be so bad if he didn't have a respectable Kentucky accent. That results in some very...creative spellings, so I've grown accustom to putting together correct word choice from context as much as anything else. :P

I use "what's going on"
D: