Consistent punctuation oddities

[Herb Stahlke]

I've found something like this fairly often with students from Africa,
the Middle East, and, to a lesser extent, East Asia.  A space before a
punctuation mark is less common that no space after one.The next
sentence,for example,begins immediately.

Herb

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 4:06 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>
> Subject:      Re: Consistent punctuation oddities
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>
>  I had students who would do this - but surely fewer than half a dozen out of many hundreds over many, many years. The error, of course, is easily corrected, but the writers would always express amazement that you can't start a line with a comma.
>
>   JL
>
>
>  Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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>  Sender: American Dialect Society
>  Poster: Charles Doyle
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> Subject: Re: Consistent punctuation oddities
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>
> A few years ago I started noticing, in hand-written discussions, commas placed at the beginning of a line rather than the end of the preceding line/phrase. I doubt if students could have seen that practice in print anywhere, and probably word-processing programs won't even permit it, unless a space is inserted prior to the comma.
>
>  --Charlie
>  ____________________________________________________________
>
>  ---- Original message ----
>  >Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:28:58 -0400
>  >From: Grant Barrett
>
>  >
>
> >Does anyone know of any work that has been done on the consistent nonstandard use of punctuation? Two not-so-rare usages come to mind.
>  >
>  >1. Space before periods and commas rather than after. "Money ,that
>  >devil substance ,is like heaven to some people .They have no idea what
>  >hell is like ." Made up example, though I see this sort of thing in
>  >emails to the radio show that I'm reluctant to quote here without the
>  >correspondents' permission.
>  >
>  >2. Using commas instead of apostrophes. "I,ve done extensive research
>  >but I,m looking for the actual law." Real example posted today to my
>  >web site
>  >
>  >What most interests me is if there's any kind of rationalization for
>  >this punctuation. Did they teach themselves to type and that's the way
>  >they've always done it? Do they think it looks better? Are they typing
>  >on a foreign keyboard? Are they unaware that it's different than the
>  >way most people do it? Something else?
>  >
>
> >Thanks, in any case.
>  >
>  >Grant Barrett
>  >gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
>  >113 Park Place, Apt. 3
>  >Brooklyn, NY 11217
>  >(646) 286-2260
>
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