Was that not the entire point of the piece? I am no learned fool, in the art of grammar, though, I do enjoy reading of those for whom it carries such importance.
My grammar is the product of the Pennsylvania public school system (paid for by the PA property tax), but it left me woefully unprepared for my private college experience. Perhaps this is why I turned to Computer Science; the software worked or did not work (though it was required to be no more than 80 columns wide, and laced with documentation).
Computational languages are generally magical in their strict adherence to grammatical rules. Perl being perhaps the least strict, and Java towards the end of the most. Many of our programming languages now come with standard linters, so even the variance allowed in the languages has been reduced to the the ruling class’ ideas of proper form. Something this article touches on in semicolon usage, visual style, is also being driven from programming languages; this comes in the form of tools like rustmt. Style in computational language has taken on a strong form of dictatorial guidance, and I’m a big fan; reducing the complexity of reading code helps reduce confusion, which, of course, reduces bugs.
It would be sad if English had a linter and an eng_USfmt, then the art of writing would be dead, and we’d have fewer things at which to naval gaze.
> English does not require an Academy of Immortals to look after it.
Many will agree with this, as do I (or, me included), but proper form should still be taught, if for no other reason than to give people confidence in their writing.
p.s. I was impressed at how long the author held out on the usage of an emoticon, but disappointed that they could not bring themselves to use emojis.
I was a bit harsh with "it comes across as a nasty case of naval gazing" - I rather enjoy these sorts of discussions.
"p.s. I was impressed at how long the author held out on the usage of an emoticon, but disappointed that they could not bring themselves to use emojis."
"PS" was what I was taught and use. Somehow, certain Latinisms (post scriptum) end up following different rules. The norm is to indicate an abbreviation by putting full stops (period) after each letter, except when you don't! Also, it seems to be acceptable to drop the full stops. So: id est and int al (etc) are perfectly acceptable. Actually, now I come to think of it, dropping the dots is usual usage unless there is an ambiguity, so RSCPA or ASPCA for example (eg). Et cetera, expempli gratia ...
You can use either PS or P.S. – neither is incorrect – a quick internet search reveals that. Also, considering it comes from the Latin post scriptum which is not capitalized and taking into consideration that writing in lower case is far more accepted these days writing p.s. is not a problem. But generally upper case is used. Compared to the loose/lose tectonic shift p.s. doesn't even register on my Richter scale. When in doubt, just look it up.
Was that not the entire point of the piece? I am no learned fool, in the art of grammar, though, I do enjoy reading of those for whom it carries such importance.
My grammar is the product of the Pennsylvania public school system (paid for by the PA property tax), but it left me woefully unprepared for my private college experience. Perhaps this is why I turned to Computer Science; the software worked or did not work (though it was required to be no more than 80 columns wide, and laced with documentation).
Computational languages are generally magical in their strict adherence to grammatical rules. Perl being perhaps the least strict, and Java towards the end of the most. Many of our programming languages now come with standard linters, so even the variance allowed in the languages has been reduced to the the ruling class’ ideas of proper form. Something this article touches on in semicolon usage, visual style, is also being driven from programming languages; this comes in the form of tools like rustmt. Style in computational language has taken on a strong form of dictatorial guidance, and I’m a big fan; reducing the complexity of reading code helps reduce confusion, which, of course, reduces bugs.
It would be sad if English had a linter and an eng_USfmt, then the art of writing would be dead, and we’d have fewer things at which to naval gaze.
> English does not require an Academy of Immortals to look after it.
Many will agree with this, as do I (or, me included), but proper form should still be taught, if for no other reason than to give people confidence in their writing.
p.s. I was impressed at how long the author held out on the usage of an emoticon, but disappointed that they could not bring themselves to use emojis.