Poor grammar plagues Preston's street signs

quote:

But the Queen's English Society (QES), which campaigns for better standards of English, has hit out at city road names such as St Pauls Square and St Margarets Close in Ingol – instead of St Paul's Square or St Margaret's Close – saying they are setting a bad example to youngsters learning basic grammar.

I'd heard of the Queen's English Society before, in connection with how they believe that if poetry doesn't have metre and a rhyme, it's not poetry.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

QES

What a hoot. I wonder what these quaint eccentric sods make of Beowulf. It certainly does not rhyme, and its metre is variable, based not on the quantity of the syllables (as is Greek and Roman poetry) nor the number of syllables as is some English poetry but by the number of stressed syllables in a hemistich (i.e., two, or four per line). I am currently reading several books about prosody: Philip Hobsbaum Metre, Rhythm, and Verse Form (1996), Charles O Hartman Free Verse: an Essay on Prosody (1980), and G Burns Cooper Mysterous Music: Rhythm and Free Verse (1998). Any one of them is a worthy read, but all three, read in parallel, are superb.

Yes, they are a bunch of peevologists with quite a good publicist.

From the The objects of the Queen’s English Society: (Warning: PDF file)

quote:

The objects of the Queen’s English Society are, according to its
constitution, “to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language as used both colloquially and in literature; to educate the public in its correct and elegant usage; and to discourage the intrusion of anything detrimental to clarity or euphony”. In short, we aim to defend unashamedly the precision, subtlety and marvellous richness of our language against debasement, ambiguity and other forms of misuse.

Typical of their kind, in short. In particular I'm amused that they aim to "educate" the public in their definition of English, not only in formal writing, but also in colloquial use. Good luck with that!

Also funny is the way they avoid a split infinitive in we aim to defend unashamedly.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: arnie,

Typical of their kind, in short.

Not knowing them from a bale of hay, I would not trust them to guard a week-old slice of cheesecake.

quote:

I'd heard of the Queen's English Society before, in connection with how they believe that if poetry doesn't have metre and a rhyme, it's not poetry.

Hmmm, sounds faintly familiar...

So, do we think it's good not to have apostrophes? I guess I rather agree with keeping them.

quote:

So, do we think it's good not to have apostrophes? I guess I rather agree with keeping them.

Weed be in trouble when were writing if we dont ever use them.

I would never advocate getting rid of apostrophes, but honestly your example demonstrates why it wouldn't be a problem if we did, because without apostrophes we still all understand it perfectly, so what additional clarity would be achieved by putting them back?

We work with the "system" we have, but nobody can argue convincingly that without punctuation or standardized spelling communication would be impossible. English did fine without either for large periods of its existence. In fact, writing is not even necessary. Some of our finest examples of literature were composed and transmitted orally at first and only written down at a later time. But given an imperfect system, such as the one we have today, there could be room for improvement. Unfortunately most of the people pushing reform are woefully under-qualified for their self-assigned task.

True. But basic punctuation does make it easier to understand. I am not talking about the "which's" and the "that's," of course, but instead general punctuation. We all know of punctuation problems that have caused errors and misunderstanding.

But basic punctuation does make it easier to understand.

Yes, both punctuation and standardized spelling do help. I simply implied that they are not necessary. As I have pointed out before, much of our system of punctuation had an origin in rhetoric. So, it is possible in speaking to make one's language clear and easily understood.

quote:

I would never advocate getting rid of apostrophes, but honestly your example demonstrates why it wouldn't be a problem if we did, because without apostrophes we still all understand it perfectly, so what additional clarity would be achieved by putting them back?

Because we know how the sentence should be punctuated, and because it makes no sense until we put the missing punctuation in, we can understand it as it's written.

But it is the knowledge of the rules of punctuation that enables us to do that on this occasion; there would be other examples where missing punctuation will give rise to genuine ambiguity or confusion.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:

quote:

I would never advocate getting rid of apostrophes, but honestly your example demonstrates why it wouldn't be a problem if we did, because without apostrophes we still all understand it perfectly, so what additional clarity would be achieved by putting them back?

Because we know how the sentence should be punctuated, and because it makes no sense until we put the missing punctuation in, we can understand it as it's written.

But it is the knowledge of the rules of punctuation that enables us to do that on this occasion

The knowledge of the rules of punctuation enable us to punctuate it correctly, but knowledge of the rules of punctuation is not necessary to understand it.

quote:

but knowledge of the rules of punctuation is not necessary to understand it

The lack of punctuation, or the wrong punctuation, in contracts or treaties, or many other writings can have severe adverse effects.

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:

quote:

but knowledge of the rules of punctuation is not necessary to understand it

The lack of punctuation, or the wrong punctuation, in contracts or treaties, or many other writings can have severe adverse effects.

Yes of course, because those sorts of writings can't have any sort of ambiguity. But knowledge of punctuation is not necessary to understand the example Richard made up. If I don't understand the rules of punctuation, I can read that sentence aloud and understand it.

Here's why punctuation is necessary.

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
Here's why punctuation is necessary.

That's funny. But what does it have to do with punctuation?

(For the record I do think punctuation is good and useful.)

He needed a comma or a period in his copy.

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
He needed a comma or a period in his copy.

How do you know? I often read aloud, and sometimes I will miss a period and phrase two sentences as one.

Of course punctuation is useful, I just don't think it's necessary for communication. Anyway, this example doesn't convince me. This is a better example.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

quote:

How do you know? I often read aloud, and sometimes I will miss a period and phrase two sentences as one.

So that makes it right?

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:

quote:

How do you know? I often read aloud, and sometimes I will miss a period and phrase two sentences as one.

So that makes it right?

Er... it's a mistake. The punctuation could have been correct, and Charles could have made a mistake. It might have nothing to do with punctuation.

A personal pet peeve (PPP): the confusion of punctuation (and spelling) with grammar.

quote:

Of course punctuation is useful, I just don't think it's necessary for communication.

Of course not. Indeed even speech - written or vocal - is not necessary for communication. But accurate punctuation makes verbal communication easier and more understandable.

Those who choose not to punctuate their writing properly (or at all) are making the reader's job more difficult and are running the risk that the reader will not properly understand what concepts he or she was intending to convey. That is, of course, their right and also their risk.

Those who choose not to punctuate their writing properly (or at all)

As I and others have stressed, it is a totally arbitrary system, and not very well thought out. Indeed, the "rules" as I was taught them in the middle of the last century have changed. (I am not talking about a difference in of the US-UK kind, but of rules in smaller area, such as Central Californian school systems.) Most of the complaints I see about bad punctuation are quite similar to peeves about splitting infinitives and the like. That is, the punctuation has very little or nothing to do with improving communication or banishing the risk of unmeaning, but more a blind adherence to some arbitrary rule from the complainant's past. A good example of this is whether restrictive clauses ought to be set off by commas while non-restrictive ones oughtn't not to be. In most cases, whether the clause is restrictive or not is discernible from the context, and I say they can be dropped. If there is some possibility of ambiguity then add them, or re-write the sentence. Me, I tend to use too many commas by today's standard.

[Fixed misspelling and a typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

quote:

I tend to use too many commas by today's standard.

I tend to put a lot of them in when writing a first draft, then prune them on re-reading. Sometimes I think I may end up with too few.

quote:

As I and others have tressed, it is a totally arbitrary system, and not very well thought out

I agree. But it is the system we have, with all its faults. Now, understandable or not, your paragraph would be much more difficult to get through had you written it without adhering to the conventions of our present, admittedly faulty, system.

Ergo:

as i and others have tressed it is a totally arbitrary system and not very well thought out indeed the rules as I was taught them in the middle of the last century have changed (i am not talking about a difference in of the US-UK kind but of rules in smaller area such as central californian school systems) most of the complaints i see about bad punctuation are quite similar to peeves about splitting infinitives and the like that is the punctuation has very little or nothing to do with improving communication or banishing the risk of unmeaning but more a blind adherence to some arbitrary rule from the complainants past a good example of this is whether restrictive clauses ought to be set off by commas while non-restrictive ones oughtnt not to be in most cases whether the clause is restrictive or not is discernible from the context and i say they can be dropped if there is some possibility of ambiguity then add them or re-write the sentence me I tend to use too many commas by todays standard

Whereas I agree that some pernickety peevishness might be better not expressed, I would prefer that to complete punctuation anarchy.

Whereas I agree that some pernickety peevishness might be better not expressed, I would prefer that to complete punctuation anarchy.

What I would prefer is that people adopt a style and stick to it. Those of us who write for a living have no problem following the arbitrary rules of punctuation and spelling. Just do not try to convince us that they are "correct" or "right" in some moral sense. I would prefer that the Strunks, Whites, and Trusses of the world just shut up and stop bothering me with their misguided twaddle.

It would be interesting to take some paragraphs of text and remove all the punctuation. Then, have some people punctuate it and compare the results. My contention is, a well-written, but unpunctuated text is easier to comprehend than a badly written, but punctuated one.

quote:

My contention is, a well-written, but unpunctuated text is easier to comprehend than a badly written, but punctuated one.

I suppose that would depend on the complexity of the piece of text and just how bad was the punctuation.

"Eats shoots and leaves" is clearly better than "Eats, shoots and leaves"

Your proposed experiment would be an interesting one but the obvious challenge is that the punctuation used would depend on not only the competence of the punctuator but also the puntuator's understanding of the meaning of the piece. A complex piece might be capable of a number of different interpretations and thus a number of different punctuations.

The famous (infamous):

"A woman without her man is nothing" is one example of just such a piece.

I suppose that would depend on the complexity of the piece of text and just how bad was the punctuation.

That is precisely why I suggested "paragraphs of text" for my experiment. Almost all examples of how punctuation improves a text are based on single sentences taken out of context. Well written texts (paragraphs, chapters, or books) have a lot more coherence between individual sentences based more on pragmatics and semantics than on spelling and punctuation. Truss' famous "Eats shoots and leaves" is not ambiguous when uttered or written in the context of an article on pandas. Of course, if it occurred in the context of hunters dining before going on to the chase, another meaning might be open to interpretation. Except in in that case, it's a bit of a stretch meaningwise owing to the reader's knowledge about hunting.

The funny thing about Truss' book is that for one so caught up on punctuated stickling, she seems unaware of the serial comma (aka the Oxford comma in the UK), which does have a use in some situations for disambiguation. Of course she may have gotten to it later but I've never been able to make it all the way through her dreadful little tome.

I came to this conversation backwards--first submitting my punctuated version of your text, and then reading all of this.

I have to say that I did not fully understand what the novelist was saying until I had punctuated the text, because it was not clear at first glance where one sentence ended and the next began.

A tiny tangent from the start of this thread, and a question for our Brits: in the UK, do you not punctuate the abbreviation for "saint?" All of those street signs with no apostrophes also had no periods after "St"

And I'll leave that sentence unpunctuated so that you'll see what I mean.

I'm sure that I am a heavy punctuator when it comes to commas, by modern standards, using them more for clarity than for following rules; but I'm sure that I left out some of the commas that Miss Thistlebottom would have demanded back in the early '60s. My punctuation habits these days are the result of 40 years of editing at work under either the New York Times or Associated Press style book, and are merely habits--the picky-picky rules themselves, I have largely forgotten! I can quote you chapter and verse on nonrestrictive appositives, though, because I once got into a big snarl with my boss about them, and the AP Style Book settled it!

Wordmatic

quote:

n the UK, do you not punctuate the abbreviation for "saint?"

No. Putting full stops after a lot of abbreviations has more or less died out anyway, but even in stricter times there was a "rule" that if the first and last letters of the word were used in the abbreviation no stop was required.

Thus we'd use "St", "Dr", "Mr", and so on without a full stop afterwards, but "Prof." would have one.

quote:

Originally posted by arnie:

quote:

n the UK, do you not punctuate the abbreviation for "saint?"

No. Putting full stops after a lot of abbreviations has more or less died out anyway, but even in stricter times there was a "rule" that if the first and last letters of the word were used in the abbreviation no stop was required.

Thus we'd use "St", "Dr", "Mr", and so on without a full stop afterwards, but "Prof." would have one.

That's interesting. But what if you have Saint Paul's Street? Is that also St Paul's St?

Wm

Considering the latest rules, it would be Saint Pauls Street. The apostrophe would be missing.

I've noticed that zmj often doesn't use periods after abbreviations such as Mr., Mrs., and St.

quote:

Considering the latest rules, it would be Saint Pauls Street. The apostrophe would be missing.

Not everyone's rules, I have to say.

But we discussed this some time ago and I believe we agreed that all bets are off when it comes to place names; the normal rules of spelling and punctuation can be abandoned since a name is just a name. And who can really argue that what the namer chooses to use to entitle his or her creation is nobody else's business.