I'm going to abscond with both of those quotes. I may have them inscribed on opposite sides of a baseball bat, so that I have something physical to beat the most egregious punctuation abusers upside the head with.
Poetry notwithstanding, language is not music and the period is not a musical rest.
a) Ooh, I like the idea of an inscribed clue-by-four -- with raised letters, reversed so that the bruise will show the message forwards.
b) I agree in general, but ... There. Are. Exceptions. (Hmm. Is that using the period as a rest, or as a staccato mark? That ellipsis would be a fermata.) There is a music to language, and when trying to convey the music of the spoken word in writing, punctuation -- used technically correctly or wilfully abused to suit the purpose -- can be a useful tool in that endeavor. (For example, my choice of em-dashes instead of commas in the preceeding sentence (though I approximated them with doubled hyphens instead of bothering to insert the HTML —, "—", which choice is the subject of a separate, tangential, discussion on typography).) That said, for the perversion of punctuation to be really effective, it has to be done at useful times and in useful ways as a deliberate choice, not willy-nilly through ignorance. And any such trick, used gratuitously, gradually grows grating, I'll grant. Overuse destroys the effect.
Quite true. While I'll admit to being a prescriptivist at heart, I do often use ellipsis as a pause because it 'looks better' than the proper double-dash. My ire is properly aimed at those who pass their not-even shorthand off as proper sentences and spelling, claiming that it's okay because they're implicitly understood. They're typically the same ones that devolve into 'WTF' and 'LOL' when you try to argue with them, which is even worse for discussion than the previous complaint.
It still makes me a little twitchy when I see people who should 'know better' doing it (that kernel of prescriptivism again), but tweaking text has a much different effect in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, than it does with someone for whom proper punctuation is a myth.
(no subject)
Poetry notwithstanding, language is not music and the period is not a musical rest.
(no subject)
b) I agree in general, but ... There. Are. Exceptions. (Hmm. Is that using the period as a rest, or as a staccato mark? That ellipsis would be a fermata.) There is a music to language, and when trying to convey the music of the spoken word in writing, punctuation -- used technically correctly or wilfully abused to suit the purpose -- can be a useful tool in that endeavor. (For example, my choice of em-dashes instead of commas in the preceeding sentence (though I approximated them with doubled hyphens instead of bothering to insert the HTML —, "—", which choice is the subject of a separate, tangential, discussion on typography).) That said, for the perversion of punctuation to be really effective, it has to be done at useful times and in useful ways as a deliberate choice, not willy-nilly through ignorance. And any such trick, used gratuitously, gradually grows grating, I'll grant. Overuse destroys the effect.
(no subject)
It still makes me a little twitchy when I see people who should 'know better' doing it (that kernel of prescriptivism again), but tweaking text has a much different effect in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, than it does with someone for whom proper punctuation is a myth.