4 Jan
2002
4 Jan
'02
12:28 p.m.
I used to have a copy of "the little book." Seems to me it was required
for Freshman English.
On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Lawrence Walker wrote:
I would doubt, altho I've been pleasantly
surprised at the depth of knowledge
of the participants on this list, if many are acquainted to the "writers
bible",
"The Elements of Style" by Stronk and White. The title gives the clue. These
are sugestions not rules. Fred is saying that typography did lay down a set
of rules to be followed if you were going to print and that this had little to do
with grammar. eg: 2 spaces after an end of sentence.
Lawrence
Damn !! I can't believe I'm a willing contributor to this OT dribble. Possibly
because it's as comfortable as a favorite BBS. Maybe we should set up
another mail-list "classiccomp.dribble" and hope it doesn't suffer the fate
of
the short-lived "discoveries on E-bay" one which rose out of a flame-war. At
least it would cut down the list msgs. to reasonable proportions. From my
point of view I could live with a split between micro and mini as I tend to
automatically delete anything with DEC (and not appended with Rainbow),
VAX, or VMS. Tho at times I'm able to actually able to understand what is
being talked about. I know !!! You'se guys are just setting me up to be a mini
collector. You have no more room for your own passion and you just want to
spread the disease. LOL.
Lawrence
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
Shady Lea, Rhode Island
"Casta est quam nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
--- "r. 'bear' stricklin" <red(a)bears.org> wrote:
Reply to:
lgwalker(a)mts.net
On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Stan Barr wrote:
It's all part of syntax and style, not grammar as you say. How many
people on this list ever turned in a paper where the teacher/professor
insisted on strict adherence to "Strunk and White"?
It's one of the syntax elements of
standard written English...
These are all _typesetting_ rules, and not so much grammar rules. Many early typewriters, in an attempt to reduce
mechanical complexity to
the utmost, even lack differentiated type for the numerals '1' and '0'
as either can be suitably approximated in typewritten documents by the
lowercase letter 'l' and the uppercase letter 'O', respectively.
On Topic: my mother's IBM Selectric type balls do not all contain a
different facet for "1" (one) and "l" (ell). She had a
2"x4" plastic
clip-on key guide for some type balls. ISTR that if you pressed the
"1" key, you got some sort of bracket with the Courier ball installed.
Even the American English "rule" of
placing all punctuation inside
quotation marks is a _typographical convention_ that stems from the early days
of movable type, when the period and comma were the most fragile pieces of
type and were prone to breaking off in the press.
Example:
At the SCM prompt, type, "SHOW BOOT."
At the SCM prompt, type, "SHOW BOOT".
Which one is correct?
This exact convention is discussed in "The New Hacker's Dictionary". It
mentions that American English convention is to put punctuation inside
the quotation marks (but does not give any explanation), and that
Hacker usage prefers things in quotes to be the literal thing you type
at the computer. I tend toward the modern usage, but I _do_ know the
difference.
-ethan
P.S. - in answer to an earlier question asked of the group in general, yes, I
have taken Latin. It was a required course (as I think it still should be,
everywhere, as it once was). I did not attend a public high-school, however.
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