Different job, Same SC's... only... weirder

[Andara Bledin]

But the ellipsis, people are constantly fucking that up. Space, dot, space, dot, space, dot. Very simple, like this . . . not this...not this.... but this . . . and if you leave one hanging at the end of a sentence, put a comma on the end . . . ,

As a wonton abuser of the poor elipse (not an eclipse as I keep reminding people I work with), while there may once have been spaces between the periods that make one up, there are no longer. For corroboration, I offer MS Word's autoformatting function which takes any group of three periods in a row and condenses them into a single character, the elipse, grouping them even closer together than three separate periods.

And I don't care what any rules say, ending a sentence with a comma goes against all reason and I refuse to even consider the idea. And, really, what is the point of sticking a comma at the end of a trailing idea?

English is a living language, oft abused and slowly evolving, and the way it is typed on the computer screen is not what you were taught in business 101. For instance, we no longer use two spaces at the end of each sentence. With modern fonts, it has become redundant. The same goes for the proper use of a colon. Also, most people refrain from using a comma to separate the next-to-last item in a list from the conjunction, although I will continue to include it.

Fun Fact: The words it's and its were actually spelled the reverse at one point. It's used to be considered the possessive, and its was the contraction. At some point, however, the usage was reversed so that it's is the contraction and its is the possessive. Personally, I don't understand why both usages are not spelled the same, since both would follow the rules for inclusion of an apostrophe.

^-.-^

[hecubus]

you needed to make you're omelette?

And, by the way, this should be 'your,' not 'you're.'





(But Mom, everyone was correcting the grammar!)

[mariamousie1]

I was taught semi-colons replace "and" or "or" if I remember high school english correctly.

[slavetotheman]

Em dash

To follow up on Anadara's rant here's how you would use the em dash in the sentence in question. This would also be my preferred way of writing it:

Some of the customers I got have been—for lack of a better term—strange.

[Andara Bledin]

I was taught semi-colons replace "and" or "or" if I remember high school english correctly.

I don't know about replacing the word "or" in a sentence. I can't think of any instance where that would work properly.

Replacing the word "and," however, I can do.

Consider this sentence:

I like Dr Pepper; I drink a can of it every morning.

There are at least three different ways to write the preceding. The way I've written it is the most appropriate for how I would express it. You could also use a conjunction as opposed to punctuation to make it more of a single thought, or you could break it up into two separate statements entirely and use a period.

^-.-^

[wagegoth]

Okay, some rights, some wrongs.

I work all day on legal documents. So you know, most are now written in fairly plain English, with only a few legal phrases (which are always highlighted by italics or underlining). This has really pushed me to make good use of all the English grammar I have had to study.

JustADude was correct. A comma was the correct usage. The commas separated off the previous clause. Dashes and parentheses are used in a similar manner, but require the clause to be independent from the sentence. The clause could be in parentheses, as it was on the border of independent, but I personally would use a comma.

Semi-colons are for related, but separate sentences, as properly noted by Andara's Dr. Pepper example, although they are more commonly now used for independent clauses, as noted by Daphne (English is always evolving).

Ellipses represent missing text. Three dots (. . .) are used between continuing text. However, if the text ends with an ellipsis, then a period -- a fourth dot -- must be used at the end (. . . .). This four-dot ellipsis may also be used in the middle of a paragraph, if the text removed was at the end of a sentence. They are now commonly used to indicate a pause or trail-off in dialogue. It's a kind of make-do situation.

I know I am about to get my entire comment ripped apart. Please, remember that I normally do not comment on grammar, spelling or language usage on this forum, and be kind.

[Ill_Used_Heroine]

I needed that information, so thank you!

I never did finish high school, and trying to read an English Grammar text is, well, next to impossible for me. I'm the type that plays with the ware to figure it out, and once I can use it THEN I'll try the how-to manual.

[Sofar]

Read the Chicago Manual of Style, people. Preferably an edition published before 1970. And you whereas you don't end a sentence with a comma, you can certainly mark where you stopped writing. In conversation people leave their sentences unfinished all the time, for dramatic effect, in the hopes that someone else will finish it, or in the hopes that someone else will take their cue to interrupt, being as the original speaker didn't really have anything more to say. This practice has leaked into our style of writing. Generally though, the ellipses is used to mark this unfinished sentence, but just a comma will do,

[wagegoth]

I need to get a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style. We had one at my previous firm.

[Broomjockey]

Read the Chicago Manual of Style, people. Preferably an edition published before 1970.

I have that, though it's the most recent version. I would like to know why you say "before 1970" though.

[Sofar]

That's when they started making up a whole bunch of dumb rules, and getting rid of a whole bunch of not-so-dumb rules. They started to get a little liberal on the subject. And everything new is wrong.

[Shabo]

Unfortunately, while you may disagree with the stupid rules they are creating, if they say that's how we write now, then that's how we write now. English is a constantly evolving language, so new rules are being created all the time.

[Rapscallion]

Heh - if how things are written now are the new rules, then that validates the 'street' spellings and usage of once-proper words. I think my main problem with this argument is that the language is evolving at a huge rate of knots. It used to be a case that a historian could trace the altered meaning of a word over centuries, but now it's within minutes in some cases.

Rapscallion

[Gabrielle Proctor]

[QUOTE=JustADude;165754]My take on it would've been as follows:
"But in my three days of employment some of the customers I got have been, for lack of a better term, strange."
QUOTE]

That's what I would have put. I might have even put a comma between "employment" and "some" just to put a pause in the sentence, but that's probably bad grammar.

[Andara Bledin]

That's when they started making up a whole bunch of dumb rules, and getting rid of a whole bunch of not-so-dumb rules. They started to get a little liberal on the subject. And everything new is wrong.

Nope. Not wrong. Different, and often quite stupid, but not, strictly speaking, wrong.

I will still, however, fight till my dying breath to deny that "irregardless" is a real word.

^-.-^