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New "No Punctuation" Standard?

H3LL

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H3LL
Joined
Jul 21, 2004
Messages
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A teacher was describing how she wanted our reports to be formatted, font, line spacing etc. and one of the students asked, "Do you want punctuation or the new standard without punctuation?"

I thought the guy was nuts until the teacher answered him as though he was talking sense.

As a result I was under the impression that there actually is a new standard for written work in education without punctuation.

Is there?!

.
 
it wouldnt surprise me if somethings too difficult to get kids to understand we just pretend it doesnt exist
 
I could say "no," but what would that prove? The person you need to ask is the teacher who understood what that student was asking.

In general, however: no.
 
well i just love when people write long paragraphs with no punctuation whatsoever because it makes them so easy to read and follow all the way through i mean why did people invent such a useless thing as punctuation anyway the chinese never bothered with it its just a pointless artifact of western culture with no benefit at all an archaic cumbersome entity that just slows down progress and language evolution and betterment its really a major pain to punctuate and capitalize in writing it creates undue stress and takes way too much effort to bother with in this day in age when everything is all about speed and technological evolution advances at hyperexponential pace we should cast off all these notions of paragraph commas periods hyphens dashes capital letters colons semi colons and relegate them to the dark ages of superstition where they belong so we can move on to eliminate those other obsolete concepts of grammar syntax and proper spelling and embrace a new bright and better future
 
whoneedspunctuationwhenherodotusandthucydideswro
tetheirgreatworkstherewasnosuchthingaspunctuationw
ordspacingorcapitalisationyoujustwroteastreamofletter
sacrossthepageandveryoftenitwasastheoxploughsiforon
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I suspect that the teacher didn't realise his urine was being extracted.
 
There was a book called 'Ulverton' by Adam thorpe which I read many years ago and there is a whole chapter written without gaps, capital letters or punctuation. Very tricky to begin with, but worth making the effort.

In the dim and distant past when I trained as a secretary, we had to put in every single bit of punctuation, but about 30 years later I did some teaching of typing by which time 'open' punctuation was the thing. It set my teeth on edge to begin with, but I quickly realised how much neater a letter looked which left out all but the essential punctuation.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
In the dim and distant past when I trained as a secretary, we had to put in every single bit of punctuation, but about 30 years later I did some teaching of typing by which time 'open' punctuation was the thing. It set my teeth on edge to begin with, but I quickly realised how much neater a letter looked which left out all but the essential punctuation.
Click to expand...

fuelair said:
http://www.easywriting.info/

Only source I can locate reasonably quickly and it applies only to beginning writers.
Click to expand...

Both these are closer to the mark. I have spoken to the teacher and her limited knowledge would confirm similar ideas to those expressed above.

Thanks.
It makes a bit more sense now.
:boggled:
.
 
In Denmark

Hmm, in Denmark, where I live, we have the traditional punctuation, and we have something called Pause-comma, in which you punctuate according to where the pauses in the sentence should be, instead of following the traditional rules. All this has accomplished is making people like me, completely screwed up, since I've been taught both techniques at the same time and therefore keep switching around between them, without thinking about it.

But hey, made it to uni :)

Anyways I'll be looking at that site that, how did fuelair put it..

"applies only to beginning writers."

Maked me feel so damn clever :)

Best regards
-Me.
 
Gradually or eventually, "proper English" tends to be whatever the populace determines it to be, for better or worse. So while there's no so-called official standard with punctuation greatly reduced or eliminated, that does appear to be the direction in which we're going. This is at least in part due to the "informalization" that is going on in the evolution of our language. For example, I see more and more examples of abbreviations without the period, like in Mr. or Dr. - or with "ie" or "eg" (in fact I do both more than a little and I've been a professional writer :boxedin: ). Also less frequent use of commas when appropriate....etc etc.
 
bigred said:
G This is at least in part due to the "informalization" that is going on in the evolution of our language. For example, I see more and more examples of abbreviations without the period, like in Mr. or Dr. -
Click to expand...

Or, alternatively, it's due to a different -- more global -- understanding of what constitutes "proper" English.

It's incorrect in UK English to put a period after Mr or Dr, and has been for at least a century. If the person you're reading hails from Merrie Olde, or is expecting a substantial part of her readership to be from Merrie Olde, then she's writing as her audience expects. Similarly, "colour" and "honor" are not necessarily misspellings-from-ignorance.
 
drkitten said:
It's incorrect in UK English to put a period after Mr or Dr, and has been for at least a century.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about that. For example, G V Carey in Mind the Stop ( Cambridge Press, 1937) says " It is customary to use a full-stop at the end of an abbreviated word..." but adds " [T]here is now a growing tendency to drop the full-stop if the abbreviation consists of simply the first and last letters of the word abbreviated..." He credits the advance of the uncluttered style to the advocacy of Fowler in Modern English Usage ( Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1926). I can't find my copy of Fowler just now, but that is right, as far as I remember.

The uncluttered style is winning handsomely, but only after a bit of a battle.:)
 
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