From: Veeramany.Sthanumurthy@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Veeramany Sthanumurthy)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian,misc.writing
Subject: Matters of punctuation (was: Is it correct that ...)
Summary: None, really. :-)
Date: 25 Aug 92 17:45:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: samba.1992Aug25.174557.9269
Followup-To: soc.culture.indian
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service

In article <1992Aug25.143829.6393@cc.tut.fi> jk87377@cc.tut.fi (Juhana Kouhia) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug22.123727.19262@jade.tufts.edu>
>slahiri@jade.tufts.edu (Sandip Lahiri) writes:
>>
>>What's in a name oops, spelling ? BTW did it remind you of something
>>else ? Just curious.
>
>Hmm... there should not be a space between the end of sentence and the
>'?'-character. Right?
>'?'-character behaves just like characters: ,;:'"`!%(){}[]-.
>The second last character '-' is when the word is broken to two lines.
>(I'm not sure about various brackets.)
>
>By the way, it is more likely that my text have spelling errors.

Perfectly possible. Grammar impeccable too. Such are the 
singularities of text!

Shouldn't it be the last character? I mean when a wo-
rd is broken up to two lines. Does the ? character really
behave like all these characters? Who would have thought it?
Puzzlers like them obviously. And, visitors. And, students.
H-1 workers. Sometimes, even the holders of the coveted
greens use them. Well, the metaphoric green. Erstwhile blue.
Now tickled pink. Don't forget the FAQ. Lots of them in there.

I am not sure about these brackets either. Some people like
them, others don't. They help to keep cool, apparently. At
least the square ones do. What about the commonest of them
all? The ubiquitous period. Nasty stuff, aren't they? Shouldn't
forget to draw a blank should we? Just look at this line - 
There are, well, now only 5 of them. Actually 9.
Parenthetically speaking (I tend to do that sometimes) I 
prefer the use of the (), though as an argument that leaves
a lot to be desired. What about the ones they call squiggly
brackets? I kind of like the name. Much better than curly.
Bracketed by larry and moe. So much for support.

Who uses period divider, I wonder? Such indefiniteness. One 
in four is 25. So is 10 in 40. And, a million out of 4000000.
All these number crunchers love them, I am sure. We don't
have much use for them here, I am afraid.

What about the colon? Should be a hot favourite. Though, not
very much in vogue. I am glad  however, I can't tell for sure.
There are times when I wonder, though. Uncommunicative as
the medium is in some ways, there are some miracle-workers.
That leads us to its half-cousin. Talking about cousins, why
the strange nomenclature? Beats me. Indicative of a brake in
thought, as it were. Stop. But, don't. There are some more.

Comma. Let us take a break from the ramblings for some real-life
definitions.

com.ma (kam'a) to cut, split 1. a mark of punctuation used to
indicate a slight separation of sentence elements, as in setting 
off nonrestrictive or parenthetical elements, quotations, items 
in a series, etc. 2. a slight pause.

Perhaps, rambling is easier. Alas! Not much to add. What about
macrons and cedilla, you ask? I leave that to the literati.
Way beyond my scope.

Sthan.

>Juhana Kouhia


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