Consistent punctuation oddities

[Lynne Murphy]

My French students put spaces before commas and periods.  I wonder if
French word-processors treat the space as non-breaking?

Lynne


Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com


--On Monday, April 28, 2008 7:04 pm -0400 Herb Stahlke
<hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> 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:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> ----------------------- Sender:       American Dialect Society
>>  <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter
>>  <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>>
>> Subject:      Re: Consistent punctuation oddities
>>  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  --------
>>
>>  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:
>>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>   ----------------------- Sender: American Dialect Society
>>  Poster: Charles Doyle
>>
>> Subject: Re: Consistent punctuation oddities
>>  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  --------
>>
>>
>> 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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