Question mark punctuation.

tim840 said:
I like standardization too. If I was going to insert a space between the end fo my sentence and the question mark, I would have to do the same thing with periods, commas, and every other punctuation mark.
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No you wouldn't. You could choose to do otherwise. Go on, be a rebel !
 
What I'm saying is, I wouldn't have to, but I would want to, because I would want my writing style to be standardized rather than having arbitrary spaces after only some of the punctuation marks. It wouldn't feel right to me to use a spae after just one or two punctuation marks, but not the rest.
 
Orleander said:
I have to have the '?' at the very end. Not a space and then the very end. I just like standardization.
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tim840 said:
I like standardization too. If I was going to insert a space between the end fo my sentence and the question mark, I would have to do the same thing with periods, commas, and every other punctuation mark.
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Ever hear of Obsessive-compulsive disorder ? :p
 
tim840 said:
What I'm saying is, I wouldn't have to, but I would want to, because I would want my writing style to be standardized rather than having arbitrary spaces after only some of the punctuation marks. It wouldn't feel right to me to use a spae after just one or two punctuation marks, but not the rest.
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There are lots of exceptions in language already.
Besides, what wrong with personalizing your writing style a bit. Everyone does it, you included.. we don't have the same handwriting.
 
Enmos said:
There are lots of exceptions in language already.
Besides, what wrong with personalizing your writing style a bit. Everyone does it, you included.. we don't have the same handwriting.
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My writing style is personalized already. I write in all capital letters (often).
 
Enmos said:
My semi colon ? Go ahead, I probably didn't use it the right way.. (?)
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You've got a persecution complex now too?

No it was my usual pathetic attempt at humour semi ( half), colon (arse?), that's all.
 
Spud Emperor said:
You've got a persecution complex now too?

No it was my usual pathetic attempt at humour semi ( half), colon (arse?), that's all.
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Ah ok.. :)

No, I don't have a persecution complex. It's just that I'm never sure about using semi colons.
 
EmmZ said:
You know what Enmos ? Fuck convention. If you're intelligent enough to know the rules then you're damn well intelligent enough to break them too. And while writing may be a means of communication it's also somewhat of an artform. I think it shows flair and panache when someone can take what they've been taught and origami the fuck out of it.
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The problem with using unconventional typography is that it slows down the readers. Yes, that extra little space isn't going to mislead anyone but it's going to make our eyes dally just a few milliseconds longer, wondering what special meaning is lurking there. Multiply it by every question mark in an entire piece of writing and multiply that by all the people who are going to read it (hopefully, or you wouldn't bother writing it), and you're wasting people's time just to make the point that you're an iconoclast. It's rather rude if you look at it that way.

It's like people who don't bother to use their spell checker. We've recently discovered that we read words holistically, all the letters at once rather than sequentially. So when there's one missing or wrong or extra, we have to stop and puzzle it out. Those people are being rude to us, wasting a lot of our collective time to indulge their laziness and save a little of their time.
Orleander said:
like ee cummings?
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We expect reading poetry to be hard work, so if it's typeset unconventionally it's just one more thing to struggle with on our way to the revelation that comes with understanding. Or it's just one more thing that makes many of us simply not ever read poetry. Life's too short to spend any of it trying to figure out what the hell a poet is trying to tell me. :)
James R said:
The space between the end of a sentence and the question mark may be a hangover from the old days of mechanical typewriters (I'm guessing).
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Intheearliestwritingthewordsjustallrantogetherwithoutanypunctuationatall (That space in the middle of the line showed up at random, I didn't put it there!)

Then somebody got the bright idea of putting spaces between the words so we could tell where one leaves off and the next one begins. It was simply for readability. There's no readability problem with punctuation marks because it's obvious that it comes between the end of one word and the beginning of the next. (With obvious exceptions like the apostrophe in contractions.) So from the standpoint of reading ergonomics, there's really no need to put a space on either side of a punctuation mark!

Spaces take up--well--space, and printers hate to waste space. Which is why they have spaces of different width in professional typesetting and always use the smallest one they can get away with. I don't really know why the convention arose to put a space to the right of a period or any other punctuation. I'd guess it was because the space between the words was there first, and when they invented punctuation marks they just left the one space and put the punctuation mark with the sentence it belongs to. It would be pretty weird to read:

How are you feeling today ?I'm just fine !Even my cat is having a nice day ,when he bothers to get out of bed.
A lot of people have various habits they were taught when they learned to type. Another one is putting two spaces instead of one between the full stop (period) at the end of one sentence and the capital letter starting the next sentence.
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That is indeed an old typing convention which I remember, as an old typist. It took me years to stop putting the extra space in on word processors.
That's fine if you're using a mechanical typewriter, but any word processor worth its salt should add in a little extra space automatically.
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Au contraire. The word processor embedded in SciForums, for example, compresses out extra spaces!
iceaura said:
And try to get rid of it when you don't want it. Pain in the ass? ass ? (note: there are three space bar spaces between the period after "it" and the P of Pain, in that last sentence. At least, there are in my typing and desired format.
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They show up in the composing window so your original characters are obviously preserved, but they do not appear in the actual post. As I said, this WP software compresses them out. I'd say it was to save space, but there is no economy of space on this SciForums. Half the screen is whitespace. There's way too much space between paragraphs, and the quote boxes are ridiculous.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The problem with using unconventional typography is that it slows down the readers. Yes, that extra little space isn't going to mislead anyone but it's going to make our eyes dally just a few milliseconds longer, wondering what special meaning is lurking there. Multiply it by every question mark in an entire piece of writing and multiply that by all the people who are going to read it (hopefully, or you wouldn't bother writing it), and you're wasting people's time just to make the point that you're an iconoclast. It's rather rude if you look at it that way.
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I suspect the extra space doesn't slow down people at all.
In fact, I think the question mark is spotted more readily this way.

Fraggle Rocker said:
It's like people who don't bother to use their spell checker. We've recently discovered that we read words holistically, all the letters at once rather than sequentially. So when there's one missing or wrong or extra, we have to stop and puzzle it out. Those people are being rude to us, wasting a lot of our collective time to indulge their laziness and save a little of their time.
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Doesn't this contradict what you said above ? The question mark isn't part of the word, yet it's stuck to it. Word recognition should suffer from sticking the question mark to a word.

Fraggle Rocker said:
Intheearliestwritingthewordsjustallrantogetherwithoutanypunctuationatall (That space in the middle of the line showed up at random, I didn't put it there!)

Then somebody got the bright idea of putting spaces between the words so we could tell where one leaves off and the next one begins. It was simply for readability. There's no readability problem with punctuation marks because it's obvious that it comes between the end of one word and the beginning of the next. (With obvious exceptions like the apostrophe in contractions.) So from the standpoint of reading ergonomics, there's really no need to put a space on either side of a punctuation mark!
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:bugeye: For real.. ?

Fraggle Rocker said:
Spaces take up--well--space, and printers hate to waste space. Which is why they have spaces of different width in professional typesetting and always use the smallest one they can get away with. I don't really know why the convention arose to put a space to the right of a period or any other punctuation. I'd guess it was because the space between the words was there first, and when they invented punctuation marks they just left the one space and put the punctuation mark with the sentence it belongs to. It would be pretty weird to read:

How are you feeling today ?I'm just fine !Even my cat is having a nice day ,when he bothers to get out of bed.
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It's weird not because you put the spaces between the word and the punctuation marks, but because you left out the space between the sentences.
 
tim840 said:
My writing style is personalized already. I write in all capital letters (often).
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I know a German guy who starts every noun with capital letter! ;)


Back on topic, I don't know if any of you has ever read the Portuguese writer José Saramago... he's got a very interesting way to use ponctuations.

cheers
 
darini said:
I know a German guy who starts every noun with capital letter! ;)


Back on topic, I don't know if any of you has ever read the Portuguese writer José Saramago... he's got a very interesting way to use ponctuations.

cheers
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Lots of commas ?
 
If I remember, I will start putting a space prior to ? & !. It does look better, Putting a space prior to a period or comma just looks like a mistake and is not aesthetically pleasing.

BTW: I wonder if it is incorrect usage to not spell question mark & exclamation point, requiring an awkward period following one of them.
 
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