Lynne Truss Please!

LeoMunro | 17:14 Fri 20th Jan 2006 | Phrases & Sayings

8 Answers

Prisons, literature, momentous journeys .*.*.

Is there here on AB an English expert who can tell me why the two asterisks are over the ellipsis to oprn a dparagraph as above?(The ellipsis I understand but have no idea what the asterisks are doing there.)

Very many thanks for any help. Please, all of you, have a nice week-end by the way - or wherever you wish!

Internationalization aka i18n

Local saying?

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dotjhawkes

What is just as mystifying to me, is how you managed to type that in, or did u copy and paste that bit? I can't see how it is done, i am sure I do not have that on my symbols page

LeoMunro

Question Author

No mystery dots Dot.

fullstop, asterisk, fullstop, asterisk, fullstop. ie: .*.*.

Thanks for writing.

kempie

As far as I am aware ellipses can take either the form ... or *** but I have never encountered a combination of the two.

jno

It could just be purely decorative - a symphony in punctuation marks. Asterisks sometimes refer you to footnotes; on AB they replace rude letters; but purely visually, they look a bit like stars and some people just find them attractive. Authors and publishers occasionally like to decorate their texts, and maybe that's what's happened here.

LeoMunro

Question Author

Very many thanks Kempie and Jno - gallant efforts, both. I was never any good at punctuation - indeed, I�m very often late!

Quizmonster

Ellipsis is the omission of one or more words and generally indicated in modern texts by dots, as .... Asterisks are more commonly used to indicate missing letters, as we often see on AnswerBank when someone - including the censor-robot! - is 'trying to disguise' an obscenity.
Personally, I have never before seen both used simultaneously and - given what I have said above - I cannot imagine why anyone would want to do so.

LeoMunro

Question Author

My thoughts exactly Quizmonster - and thanks for your comments.

The same quiz compiler (ST. WWI?) used to do things like ``This is the last stop.'' but when I asked the ST why the different quation marks, of course, "No correspondence will be ... ".

I am, however, very grateful for these WWI? quizzes, that help "make" my Sunday mornings and and have great respect for the diligent efforts of the compiler but ...

Thanks again Quizmonster and all the very best.

LeoMunro

Question Author

What the L are quation marks?

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