Today is Punctuation Day.
Quoting from Brian Bilston's book Days Like These "Punctuation Day, which occurs annually on this date, is a day on which pedants come together to criticise the punctuation and spelling of others, as they do on all other days. Things can become rather heated in the process, with arguments often spilling over into violence. This has led to colons being extracted, infinitives split, bullet points fired, and commas inverted. And for the improper use of ellipses...
He follows that, as he does for every day of the year, with a poem. Today's is entitled "Greengrocers Apostrophe's: and other Punctuation". It is an amusing read as are most of his daily poems.
It made me think, though, that the subject of sloppy and just plain erroneous punctuation seems to have fallen off the agenda.
I wonder if anyone these days even remembers Lynne Truss's book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"?
Does anyone know if punctuation is taught in schools nowadays?
Does anyone care about punctuation any more?
Can anyone spell”drawers” anymore?tThey always put “draws”.Have a look on Amazon marketplace.
ReplyDeleteBarbarax
Gosh, Barbara, I hadn't realised how prevelant that was.
DeleteOh Graham. I don't know where to start. I am usually appalled by the standards today. The BBC website is often the worst offender when it comes to spelling and grammar.
ReplyDeleteI had better stop now before my internal boiler explodes.
JayCee, I never thought that the Gruniad could have been overtaken so comprehensively in the Poor Grammar race.
DeleteI'm afraid I don't know either of those authors. I do care about punctuation; but perhaps that only shows that I belong to a generation that was still taught to consider it important - and have long since lost touch with what they teach in schools nowadays!
ReplyDeleteWe are both in the same boat, Monica.
DeleteI do care about punctuation and for that very reason I think some consider me quaint!
ReplyDeleteDavid, I'm not sure I've been called or considered quaint but I've certainly been called a dinosaur and less flattering things.
DeleteI care a lot about punctuation.
ReplyDeleteRachel, you that is obvious from your writing which I have seen..
DeleteI care too. My biggest problem is always, always going to be commas. Those sneaky bastards sneak in and infest everything I write. I come back later and there they are. I weed them out, but they are ever an embarrassment to me. Also my parenthes. I forget to close them often. And I use ellipses way too often and incorrectly. Other than that, my punctuation is okay. I think. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteDebby, I always find your writing clear and understandable (and frequently describable by many other adjectives irrelevant to the subject of this post).
DeleteWell...there is also the issue of spelling which I also thought I was good at, until such a time as I reread that comment and realized that I had mispelled parentheses. *hangs head in shame*
ReplyDeleteDebby, I had to go back and check. I had originall read what I had expected to read and not that which your wrote and so your error had gone unnoticed by me.
DeleteComputer spell check has led to a deterioration in my spelling. Punctuation can be terribly important in anything written. Just to mention, we had a plant nursery here called Eats, Roots and Leaves.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the smile, Andrew, I think that is quite clever.
DeleteGood questions but the answers are terrible. When I retired in 97 they had stopped teaching grammar and spelling.
ReplyDeleteRed, it's so sad that the art of communicating accurately is being lost.
DeleteI care but I used to care more than I do now. My expectations are now so much lower than they were.
ReplyDeleteYou and I are on the same song sheet yet again, Pauline.
DeleteI'm sure I make occasional mistakes, but I do try not to. I do know of a greengrocer who sells Bean's, Carrot's, Potato's, etc. I expect he does it on purpose!
ReplyDeleteCro, there are none of us who don't make mistakes. The difference is that you (and, I hope, I) know when we have made them. The greengrocer's sign? Umm.
DeleteI care about punctuation, spelling and grammar, no matter what language I am using at any given time. Of course I don't always get it right, but I try to do my best. Some instances (a quick text messages, for example) require a little less care and attention than, say, an important email to a client, and I adjust my level of pickiness accordingly.
ReplyDeleteLynne Truss? I have not read the book you mention here, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one:
https://librarianwithsecrets.blogspot.com/2011/04/read-in-2011-8-talk-to-hand.html
And of course, I spotted at least one mistake in my comment as soon as I published it...
DeleteI had to search for the error. It took me two reads to find it. We so often see what we expect to see not that which is necessarily there.
DeleteI have the Lynne Truss book you blogged about. It was very funny and, of course, astute.
As for your use of the English language, you are a good example to us all.
Punctuation is still taught in primary school in UK.
ReplyDeleteThe Times seems to be as bad as the Guardian at writing appallingly. Proof readers no longer seem to employed.
As for spell checkers, they only work if one knows how to spell, in much the same way as calculators only work for those with a basic appreciation of number.
Jabblog, it's good to hear punctuation is still taught in primary schools. I hadn't really thought about the point in your third paragraph but, yes, indeed.
Delete*@--_!?
ReplyDeleteTasker, please don't swear on this blog 😂.
DeleteI have that book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", and thoroughly enjoyed it. As for whether punctuation is still taught, my experiences of reading application forms for jobs is that English grammar and punctuation have been considered optional for many years, and the Microsoft spell/grammar checker dominates traditional English. My sister in law once taught in a private secondary school, and claimed that most of her time was spent in teaching/correcting the English that the kids had come from primary school with.
ReplyDeleteWill, it's not exactly an uplifting situation that you paint. It saddens me.
DeleteI try to use the correct punctuation. As long as I can figure out their meaning, I don't care what others do about punctuation. Gosh, I had to proof this little comment several times to make sure I had no mistakes!! :)
ReplyDeleteEllen, I find that one of the things that face pedants and come to bite them on the bum is their own failings.
DeletePunctuation in blogging is very important especially when you know there are writers and teachers reading your blog. Writing styles, I believe, have shifted away from good punctuation in an effort to be cool, hip hopping up to date. One such change, that I like, is the regular use if the one word sentence, Capitalized word with a period.
ReplyDeleteI agree, May (I'm used to calling you Maywin), that punctuation is important in blogging when you are blogging to like minded people.
DeleteThat anonymous is me, May at Salty Pumpkin. On my iphone, signed in shouldn’t show up as anon
ReplyDeleteMay, I find when signing in to Chrome on my phone frequently I am still ignored by Blogger.
DeleteWhat I know is that punctuation, spelling and grammar seems to be seriously lacking these days especially from journalists when writing news articles.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! GLARING ERRORS! What happened to editors, do you suppose? They surely make red pencils still.
DeleteAmy and Debby, but do they still make red lines for computer text?
DeleteI care about punctuation and grammar, spelling too. I never felt like I had a great handle on proper punctuation so I may be lacking in some technicalities.
ReplyDeleteI did read somewhere (and I suspect I'm repeating myself) that being pedantic about grammar, spelling and punctuation is a sign of privilege.
I've thought differently about it since then.
Kylie, I've been thinking about your statement. Being pedantic is certainly a sign of the good fortune to have learned whatever it is about which one is pedantic. Is that a privilege?
DeleteWhen we consider the reasons a person may not learn: learning disability, lack of support, disrupted education etc, then yes, I think learning is a privilege.
DeleteIt's a form of one-upmanship in many cases, I think. People will point out some error. Why? It's merely a way to make others look small. Always. There is no actual teaching being done here. You are not a teacher pointing out mistakes to a student. You are an adult who is seeking to highlight your superiority. I think it is rude.
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