Is This the Future of Punctuation? | Hacker News Reader

Is This the Future of Punctuation?

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39 pointsjamesbritt32 comments

I think it's about time British-style or "logical punctuation" of quotes becomes standard.

Especially coming from a programming background, it just makes more sense. Periods should go outside the quote if they aren't actually part of the quote.

I used to be a grammar nazi, but now I accept that we are witnessing hyper-evolution of written language. Before the internet, I didn't realize how pervasively people confused its/it's and lose/loose. (I knew there/their/they're was a common problem.)

I previously assumed languages typically evolved through "erosion" by dropping letters or spaces as a matter of saving time or space. But in today's computerized world, time and space are cheaper, so grammar exceptions seem to what is eroding: its/it's is an apparent punctuation exception and lose/loose is a pronunciation exception.

its/it's, they're/their, and you're/your are easy to remember: Possessive pronouns never have apostrophes.

Except for one.

Hm, well I guess there's always one exception :)

I am not a native English speaker, but I'm constantly dumbfounded as to why anyone would even entertain the idea that "its/it's" are in any way similar. When you substitute one with another, the sentence just does not parse. It stops making sense.

By conflating "its" and "it's", you are overloading the meaning of "its", making the language more ambiguous.

Perhaps this also has to do with me being accustomed to more formal (programming) languages.

The reason it's confusing is that 's after a personal pronoun usually indicates possession, whereas this is the opposite for it's/its, so in that sense it's an exception to a rule, which people have a hard time remembering.

What personal pronouns have 's for the possesive form? Mine's? Your's? Hi's? Her's? Their's?

Ah, you found the rule for when you don't use it. Contrary to many textbooks, teachers, and websites, the lack of an apostrophe in "its" is not an exception--you don't use the apostrophe for pronouns. "His". "Hers". "Yours". As apposed to "Jack's", "Julie's", "the user's".

"opposed".

Normally I wouldn't correct you, but this being the grammar nazi thread and all...

"Its" is only used in places where "his", "her", and "your", which don't have the s's, are used. People don't use "its" in places where they'd use "hers" or "yours". It's awkward.

That's a better example. My explanation was wrong, but it's still an exception in the context you provide.

Bob's house. The mayor's key. The people's choice.

Those are nouns, not pronouns.

Sorry, I used the wrong terminology.

This reminds me of Keith Houston's wonderful blog, Shady Characters (http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/). Keith has written at length on the pilcrow, interrobang, and sarcasm marks (all touched upon briefly in this article) amongst other punctuation marks.

I am somewhat surprised that Shady Characters was not cited by the article. There is simply no better place to learn the surprising, entertaining histories of our punctuation.

The problem with the apostrophe is that possessive forms in English are just so horribly screwed that nobody has any idea how to even say them properly, much less how to apply punctuation.

I think that 'nobody' is a bit of an exaggeration. Or are you claiming that people who do know are just nobodies?

Yes, "nobody" was an exaggeration. Though there are a lot of edge cases.

Sometimes, but most cases are quite simple. I learned the difference between they're/there/their sometime before grade 8, and I generally expect people I converse with to recognize that distinction.

As for possessive forms - that's even easier. In most cases, if something belongs to someone, use an apostrophe. If it doesn't, then don't. Okay, it can get confusing, but in most cases, it's not.

LeafStorm was talking about saying them properly. How do you say:

"That [thing] is Jess's"?

(conversely, is it Jess' or Jess's or should we be forced to say 'belongs to Jess')?

Now, imagine you're not a native speaker and you have to figure out how to say that. That's the difficulty.

The thing is, I'm not a native speaker; it's not really something I struggled with when I learned English. I believe the general rules I learned were:

plural & no possession: no apostrophe

singular, possession & name doesn't end with s: 's

singular, possession & name ends with s: '

plural, possession & name doesn't end with s: s'

I'm a native English speaker and my name ends in 's', yet even I waffle about whether I just use an apostrophe. I generally include an apostrophe just for consistency.

My heuristic is: if I would pronounce the extra sound, then include the apostrophe. Unfortunately, this would not help non-native speakers.. <:)

We can say that Shenglong's rules are "English", and then whatever you do in real life is your "dialect".

And yet if you try to trace back why those "rules" have any authority and you're likely to end-up back at a claim that it was what everyone did in their real life.

The rules have the authority we give them. Either we give up on having an English language that we can agree on, or we have arbitrary rules.

Conventionally, you would just say "Jesses" and the possessive would be clear from context.

As for the apostrophe, the veritable Strunk & White (arbiters of writing style) say:

  Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

  Charles's friend
  Burns's poems
  the witch's malice

  Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake. But such forms as Moses' Laws, Isis' temple are commonly replaced by the laws of Moses the temple of Isis.

I think the sarcasm mark (snark) is stupid. Doesn't make any sense⸮

I think it's useful when having a conversation via IM.

Avoids misunderstanding and adds humour.

I've also heard it referred to as the sarcastrophe :)

I like the Snark symbol. Is that in unicode?

The closest is the reversed question mark '⸮'. You can read more about it at The Wiki, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Irony_punctua...

That showed up as a blank square on my iPhone. Here on HN, I've seen /~ used to denote sarcasm. Alternatively, the winking emoticon ; ) or tongue sticking out emoticon : P work as well.

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