rmestre

There definitely needs to be an emphasis on punctuation. I have noticed , mainly in the Poems section , a sometimes total disregard for punctuation.

You can read poetry with great words only to have the visualization ruined by the lack of or improper punctuation.

Punctuation plays an integral part in all sentence structure , even if you write your poem in a run on or cut up format . A perfectly places comma can make all the difference.

Okay....I'm done babbling !

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Csira

When I started writing poetry, I disregarded all punctuation. But my 2nd year H.S. English teacher advised that I should add punctuation in my poems. So I've broken out of the habit and started to punctuate. I did not really understand why it would be better, but now I have a hard time adjusting to poetry that are lacking punctuation. ::shrugs:: It has just become a new preference.

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Ceridwen

Sometimes I have problems regarding punctuations. Many (those who read my works) have noticed how I put a lot of commas to some parts of the sentences. Some are needless and some are on the wrong places, even now, I hope I'm putting my commas where they should be.

Punctuations are one of the important things to remember in writing.

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Armon

I think I do a decent job at punctuation. But, I always get myself confused with dialog. Which of the following is correct:

1. "Are you listening?" she asked.
2. "Are you listing," she asked.

The first one seems right to me at first, but it also seems wrong for some reason.
The second one also seems right to me, but shouldn't I have a question mark somewhere?

I don't know, does this even really matter much?

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TimK

Hi, Armon. This one is correct. A question mark or exclamation point goes inside the quote marks if the quotation is a question or exclamation, respectively. Otherwise, if the whole sentence is the question or exclamation, the mark goes outside the quotes, at the end of the sentence. This rule holds regardless of whether the quote is at the end of the sentence. So:

She asked, "Are you listening?"
Should I have replied, "No, I'm not"?

BTW, commas and periods always go inside the quotes. Colons and semicolons always go outside the quotes. No one asked, but somehow it seemed relevant.

-TimK

Pawn

The opening of this thread grabbed my attention. Poetry is by far the most liberal of the literary mediums; so very uncluttered by rules. To me, I see the placement of any particular demand for punctuation as an infringement on the absolute creative control of the writer. It is absolutely fine to use punctuation. It is also, in my view, absolutely fine to go without it. There are many famous poets on either end of the spectrum, and some who fall somewhere between. In essence then, I believe you be in error.

That said, it would be nice if the authors short stories or other works of fiction or non-fiction would make efforts to keep their spelling and grammar at a good standard.

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Armon

I get the whole thing about keeping the punctuation in the quotation marks, but, in my example, wouldn't the question mark end the sentence, thus making "she asked," its own sentence? I guess at this point, since you said that form was correct, it's a matter of capitalization. Which one now:

"Are you listening?" she asked.
"Are you listening?" She asked.

Or, am I just taking the rules too far?



(Is it just me, or do I have a bad habbit of making my sentences long?)

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Ceridwen

Same question...what about capitilization (as to what Armon just said above) ???

And I have a question about this " ; " when is this used???

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TimK

Hi, Armon and Ceridwen. The question mark IIRC applies to the quoted part, but it takes the place of a comma in the entire sentence. So it woule be The "she said" part isn't a sentence of its own, only a part of the larger sentence including the quoted speech.

A semicolon is used (1) to separate independent clauses, including those using conjunctive adverbs (however, therefore, so, also, etc.), or (2) to separate other clauses when commas won't do the job. It's less of a stop than a period, but more than a comma. So:(Okay, so I used a colon in there, too.)

-TimK

klaus

Hehe, software engineers are always peculiar about those things--I know how frustrating it is to debug a logic error especially if it involves ";".

I still remember how I spent 3 hours over a ";" after a "IF" statement

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Pawn

Hehe. People think english grammar is hard, they should try programming. The difference between a " and a ' can cost you two hours

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Armon

Ah ha! Another incosistent rule of the English language. Whoever came up with this stuff should be shot.
Thanks though. Now I need to go back and edit my old writing.



That's why I always bracket my if statements. Assuming you're using Java, the Eclipse IDE has excellent code checking for that kind of stuff.



One of the many reasons why I avoid JavaScript/ECMAScript in my JSPs and Servlets. Now if only they had an easy way of telling what the local printer name is from the server-side.

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Pawn

PHP is god

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Armon

But tastes horrible compared to Java.

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A society that puts equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. - Milton Friedman

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klaus

This forum is written in PHP
Maybe you wanna write a java version of your own

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