Argh Pet Peeve!

[luckygirl]

Originally Posted by Satai

Mine is punctuation. I understand that people will make typos, and I'm pretty patient with bad spelling, but bad punctuation just drives me insane. I'm not talking about the obscure or complicated parts but rather use of more than one exclaimation point or question mark - it's weird, I know, but I just feel more than one is redundant. I do understand that it's mostly for emphasis but I really do sometimes feel like shouting, "don't you understand what it's for?"

See, one question mark, and I got my point across just fine.

OMG I am SOOOO guilty of this!!! I always use 3 !!!'s....I just feel that it better conveys my thorough excitement!!! Where one seems to me to be angry or yelling. Crazy huh? Just ignore my posts then....

cause I don't think I can stop!!!

(do they have support groups for this kind of multiple punctuation addiction?!)

 

[zissou'smom]

Originally Posted by GingersMom

Would you mind very much sharing with me the source of this information? I have a communications degree, have taken more than my share of English and writing classes, have extensive theater experience where proper enunciation was always stressed, and nowhere before have I ever heard that AKS is the original pronounciation of the word ASK.

Caedmon, for one, spelled it "acsian" around 1000. Chaucer, in the prologue to the tale of the Wife of Bath, used "axe" in 1386. Wycliffe's bible around the same time used "axide" or "axe" as well. In 1803, a man who wrote "Anecdotes of the English Language" wrote: "A true born Londoner, Sir, of either sex, always axes question, axes pardon, and at quadrille axes leave" (I assume this is out of copyright, yes?) (citation from the OED... but not quoted or paraphrased)

Up until the regularization of spelling, which in many cases followed the rules of Latin or simply fancy, the "ask" or "aks" were just as acceptable. And in Old English, it was always "acs-" and never "asc", which would have been pronounced "ash" anyway. It became ask in some dialects through metathesis, one of them being the dialect around London that our own modern English happened to evolve from, mostly because it was spoken by people with the most power.

But the spoken form "aks" never died the way the spelling did. When someone says "aks" they just speak a different dialect than you, they aren't wrong. Anything that naturally occurs in anyone's speech isn't wrong, to a linguist. It just isn't Standard English. Most of the things we view as errors or mistakes aren't. They're just differences, and differences that are characteristic of the speech of people who are not those in socioeconomic power. For instance, if you don't say your r's in some parts of the south, you are viewed as refined and wealthy. But if you don't say them in Brooklyn, you're immediately labeled as lower-class.

This isn't communications, it's linguistics: the two fields often oppose one another. Communications and theatre, I imagine, would teach you very well how to speak and write in the most prestigious forms of modern English. That's far from the point of linguistics.

 

[satai]

Originally Posted by LuckyGirl

OMG I am SOOOO guilty of this!!! I always use 3 !!!'s....I just feel that it better conveys my thorough excitement!!! Where one seems to me to be angry or yelling. Crazy huh? Just ignore my posts then....

cause I don't think I can stop!!!

(do they have support groups for this kind of multiple punctuation addiction?!)

Probably only at my house.

 

[gingersmom]

Wow, Zissou's Mom, consider me edumacated!!!

Thanks for the info!

(Yes, I know, I'm guilty of the multiple punctuation myself.

)

 

[graciecat]

The one that drives me over the edge is when people say..."Do you have an IDEAL what would cause that?"

Dear God the word is IDEA leave the "L" off!

 

[lisasha3]

Originally Posted by Zissou'sMom

I also am a multiple punctuation user. I also use this ?!?! mark, which drives the languages mavens up a wall.

Originally Posted by LuckyGirl

OMG I am SOOOO guilty of this!!! I always use 3 !!!'s....I just feel that it better conveys my thorough excitement!!! Where one seems to me to be angry or yelling. Crazy huh? Just ignore my posts then....

cause I don't think I can stop!!!

(do they have support groups for this kind of multiple punctuation addiction?!)

I am soooooo guilty of the multiple punctuation thing. I'm always using multiple "!!!"s. I'm also guilty of the ?!?! cause in my mind ?!?!=:censor::censor::censor:. So if you ask a question with this type of punctuation it means :censor::censor::censor: does this mean or say? I'm also guilty of using many many periods. These signify......pauses......in my thought process. I'm not sure how else to signify a pause so my e-mails, posts, etc are loaded with these "pauses"

As for the whole "will you sale this?" I have seen the following many times and had pictures of them - "for sail" and "fore sale". The latter still on the truck some guys selling down the street from me. It's ok if your grammer is bad, may not be your fault, but you might want to verify things before you put them out on your front lawn for all to see. You think?

 

[zissou'smom]

Originally Posted by GingersMom

Wow, Zissou's Mom, consider me edumacated!!!

Thanks for the info!

(Yes, I know, I'm guilty of the multiple punctuation myself.

)

It's all I know about... aks

me a math question and I'll try to hide!

Satai, you're making me paranoid about my !!!s and ???s You know, if one ! is excited, then how enthusiastic must !!! be? More is always better

Just kidding. I don't know why I do it.

 

[satai]

Originally Posted by lisasha3

I'm also guilty of using many many periods. These signify......pauses......in my thought process. I'm not sure how else to signify a pause so my e-mails, posts, etc are loaded with these "pauses"

Just in case you're curious the correct term for the pauses you mention is an "ellipsis" (plural ellipses), commonly refered to as "dot dot dot". It looks like this:

...

and is used to indicate a pause (informal, and technically, incorrect), to trail off dramatically, or, formally, to indicade the ommission of part of a quotation.

The ellipsis is one of the parts of punctuation I was referring to as "obscure or complicated".

Strictly speaking, you should have to indicate pauses when writing - you just stop, think, decide what to write and write it. However, people do seem to perfer to write emails as if they were talking, so I tend to treat recieved email similarly.

Also, I don't mind an extra dot on the end of the ellipsis to indicate trailing infinately - but that's my only exception.