It's true...I love language, but I absolutely swoon over punctuation when it's used correctly, especially apostrophes and quotes.
Apostrophes signify missing letters in contractions ("it" + "is" = "it's"), and they indicate possessives ("Tim's turn"). They don't make acronyms plural: The plural of CD is CDs, not CD's. And they don't do anything useful in these sad examples: outta' and its'. Don't fling apostrophes around like sprinkles and hope they land somewhere useful.
Quotes indicate quoted material (duh) or ironic expressions. They don't add emphasis; they only confuse people who look for irony where there is none. A restaurant in my hometown advertised its homemade "food" -- no doubt they were not being ironic, but at first glance, you seek the irony: If not food, what the heck were they serving? And the classic is: I "respect" you. Right. Acid test: If you see quotes and shudder, they probably don't belong there.
Show punctuation some love!
About me
- Gretchen
- Cary, NC, United States
- I love language. I love the way it looks on the page, sounds on the ear, feels on the tongue.... I even love all the little rules that govern its use.
And when I see language being misused as a blunt instrument just to get a point across ("You understood me, right? Why do I have to spell it right or pronounce it right or use exactly the right word...?), I cringe. Does that make me a purist, a preservationist, or just a persnickety pain?
If a player walks up to home plate with a 5-iron ("Hey, it's a stick to hit a ball...why does it matter that I use the 'right' one?"), what would baseball lovers say? Something unprintable, no doubt. But their love of the game the way it's supposed to be played is the same as my love of language. So let's look at the way language is supposed to be played.
Language lovers, unite! Or play ball! Or whatever...just help keep proper language in play.
2 comments:
I have seen people use quotes to indicate a bolded word. This typically happens if they are using a plain-text editor where bold is not supported.
However *the correct way* to bold something in a plain text media is to put them between two asterisks.
Saqib, I agree completely. Asterisks are the way to go when bold text is not supported. Thanks for your comment!
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