The power of punctuation.

[Traci66]

We all know that adding a comma, apostrophe etc, can completely change the meaning of a sentence, what I want to know is does this also happen in other languages or is it just English?

[wolf63]

I am not all that knowledgeable about the laws of punctuation but, unlike my mother, I do use it. :-)

When reporting an incident in newspapers and an animal is mentioned why do they put "" around the animals name?

>>Wolf and her cat "Frankie" were today rescued from the river Tay..

What rule governs this use?

[Bambiagain]

Wolf, I really don't think it's necessary - in fact it irritates me since your cat has a real name and it looks as if it is being referred to as a nickname. But it does seem that certain people insist on putting inverted commas around names, particularly of animals.

[jno]

unnecessary in my opinion, "wolf63"

[MarkRae]

But that is actually the etymological of le chienlit, and that is how it is pronounced!

cf http://en.wikipedia.o...m#Origin_of_the_names

[jno]

they have the same origin, but the more common shortened version has a weaker connotation. The older one still held the power to shock. My recollection is that he said the word more slowly than usual to emphasise what he was saying... but in a deniable way.

[wolf63]

"Frankie" and "Merlin" thank you jno and bambi, next time they appear in the newspaper they will make sure the stupid humans use the correct punctuation marks.

[Bambiagain]

Well, I hope the next mention won't be in connection with you having to be pulled out of a river, or a burning building.

[MarkRae]

That is almost certainly the case - the French are much less precious about "gros mots" than the Anglo-Saxons.

"Stewart Adamson left The Skids and became a Big Country member."
"I remember".

[seadogg]

Experienced morse operators tend to use the full stop rarely, often preferring to use the hyphen instead. Also "and" becomes et which is much faster to key. To us, morse is a language which is not impeded by national frontiers.

[FredPuli43]

The counsel of perfection for lawyers was to avoid punctuation at all. A reason may be found in the Roger Casement story given (above) .And it is possible to find old legal documents where that was done to perfection.It is difficult to do because we are so used to paranthetic phrases, such as this, and punctuation; so needed in our everyday writing; has thus become a necessity!