Consistent punctuation oddities

[Joel S. Berson]

At 4/29/2008 01:40 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>while we're on the subject: i used to get an odd treatment of
>parentheses in some papers from foreign students (it's been long
>enough that i don't recall what countries they were from) -- lack of
>spaces outside the parents, and spaces inside, and sometimes both.  a
>maximal example (invented):
>
>   this idea( that there are empty categories )was first suggested
>by ...
>
>does this resonate with anyone?

How about comma-parenthesis, e.g. the first that comes to hand:

There can hardly remain, for me, (who am really getting to be a
frosty bachelor, with another white hair, every week or so, in my
moustache,) there can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon
the hearth, as that which I remember the next day, at Blithedale.  (1852)

Joel

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