Andrew has created a poll of his own on his site. Here's mine:
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Restaging the Two Cultures test
I'm rushing so don't have time to go into a lot of detail, but at Dr. Andrew Maynard's request, I've created a 'competing' poll in the leadup to the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures lecture originally delivered in 1959. For some background on the importance of this work, here you go.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
Somehow the semicolon seems a bit deeper in the weeds than the concept behind perpetual motion...
Maybe something more like whether language has right-and-wrong aspects (prescriptive grammar vs descriptive)?
@dave We could have done possessives of proper names ending in c, s, x, or z; variation for aforementioned surnames of two or more syllables.
Now that would have been a research exercise.
It's not like English has an amazing amount of punctuation to wade through; you know we've done this all in class at some point; and if you plan to write, it's something you should know.
So there, she said testily. ;)
But, as always, there is not only one correct answer. Frustrating.
Probably don't want the correct answer to be the first (if someone scrolled all the way down here without voting, they might as well have googled it, so don't complain), people are more likely to select the first anyway. Also, with multiple choice tests, the default for good test takers is to choose the one with the most difficult words (cough cough). Also, using words like "super comma" in the only other conceivable answer makes it seem wrong. Finally, read Eats, Shoots and Leaves - the semi-colon has been going out of style and is used in many different contexts and therefore "correct usage" is debatable. Do you really have research that this is the "most common" usage?
@JSmith This poll was conceived and designed after a 10-second consultation with @2020science in less than 10 minutes as I rushed off to a dental appointment, so I'm not making any apologies for it.
I have some research, yes. And sorry, I gave my copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves away. I'll be sticking to the Chicago Manual of Style on this one. My copy editing days have been over for quite a while.
But I'm never going to abandon the semi-colon.
None of the above? The most common usage of the semi-colon may well be the winking smiley (@Ruth Seeley, I'm looking at you)
;-) ;-) ;-)
Ha ha - good point, Anonymous, hadn't thought of the semi-colon's reinvigoration via the winkie.
I'd look back but I don't know who you are! ;) And actually, I've never mastered the wink in real life. Hence my enthusiastic adoption of it in virtual life. :) Oh wait, smiling I *can* do in real life. Nudge, nudge. ;) ;)
Post a Comment