Latest news with #punctuation
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bridal bucket is the best wedding gift
Re wedding lists (The toilet roll wedding list – is this the least romantic gift request ever?, 20 May), when my parents announced their engagement in 1951, one of my mother's sisters, then on a low wage, bought a bucket. Each week on payday, she added some household item to it – a scrubbing brush, a mop, a floor cloth, shoe polish and brushes, cleaning products. It was the most useful wedding gift they received, according to my mother. Cliodhna Dempsey Bereldange, Luxembourg • 'We have created incentives to try to retain our most precious resource, which is our management team,' the chair of Thames Water is quoted as saying in your article (23 May). I would suggest their most precious resource is clean water. Their management is pretty inept if they don't realise people reckon their track record warrants no bonus. If anything, they should be paying fines for the DunnSt Andrews, Fife • I wholeheartedly agree with Lucy Mangan in her defence of the semicolon (Digested week, 23 May); however, I note with regret that she has not seen fit to use this valuable punctuation mark in her CopasBrentwood, Essex • At school in the 1950s, we were told that, if in doubt, we should read a sentence aloud and if a pause sounded right with a count to one, a comma was required, two – a semicolon, and three – a colon. It seemed to RowleyDidsbury, Manchester • Stand by for balaclavas becoming ubiquitous fashion wear (Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police use soars, 24 May).Colin Prower Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire • 'Artificial intelligence to play increasing role in armed forces, says defence secretary' (20 May). Could this be one small step on the road to the dystopia envisioned by the Terminator franchise?Tony RimmerLytham St Annes, Lancashire
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Bridal bucket is the best wedding gift
Re wedding lists (The toilet roll wedding list – is this the least romantic gift request ever?, 20 May), when my parents announced their engagement in 1951, one of my mother's sisters, then on a low wage, bought a bucket. Each week on payday, she added some household item to it – a scrubbing brush, a mop, a floor cloth, shoe polish and brushes, cleaning products. It was the most useful wedding gift they received, according to my mother. Cliodhna Dempsey Bereldange, Luxembourg 'We have created incentives to try to retain our most precious resource, which is our management team,' the chair of Thames Water is quoted as saying in your article (23 May). I would suggest their most precious resource is clean water. Their management is pretty inept if they don't realise people reckon their track record warrants no bonus. If anything, they should be paying fines for the DunnSt Andrews, Fife I wholeheartedly agree with Lucy Mangan in her defence of the semicolon (Digested week, 23 May); however, I note with regret that she has not seen fit to use this valuable punctuation mark in her CopasBrentwood, Essex At school in the 1950s, we were told that, if in doubt, we should read a sentence aloud and if a pause sounded right with a count to one, a comma was required, two – a semicolon, and three – a colon. It seemed to RowleyDidsbury, Manchester Stand by for balaclavas becoming ubiquitous fashion wear (Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police use soars, 24 May).Colin Prower Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire 'Artificial intelligence to play increasing role in armed forces, says defence secretary' (20 May). Could this be one small step on the road to the dystopia envisioned by the Terminator franchise?Tony RimmerLytham St Annes, Lancashire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Using This Punctuation Mark May Reveal Your Age, Experts Say
Most of us are familiar with 'Boomer ellipses,' or the ominous '...' some texters use in place of a full stop or comma. Even double spacing can reveal your age; older typists prefer it, especially following a full stop, though even the staunchest defender of that grammar rule (style guide APA) conceded defeat in 2019. Speaking to HuffPost UK, language learning platform Babbel says that after pairing with the London Student Network, they found another potential generational divide. 'Our findings reveal that the semicolon is an 'endangered' punctuation mark - abandoned by many British writers who might have been expected to showcase its value, and often misunderstood by younger generations,' they said. Renaissance printer and typographer Aldus Manutius invented the semicolon mark in the 15th century; it appeared for the first time in 1494 in Manutius's De Aetna. It was meant to show a pause slightly longer than a comma but shorter than a short stop. Using Google Ngram Viewer, a tool developed with Harvard University to spot writing patterns over time, Babbel found that in 1781, the semicolon appeared once every 90 written words. By 2005, it was down to one semicolon every 205 words. In 2022, it was once every 390 words; a 47% decrease between 2000 and 2022 alone. 'There's definitely a generational shift at play,' linguistic and cultural expert at Babbel, Sofia Zambelli, tells HuffPost UK. 'According to our research, over half (54%) of young Britons admit they don't know the rules for using semicolons, and fewer than one in three use them at all.' So, the linguist says, 'While it's not a perfect litmus test, using a semicolon correctly or at all often correlates with age... Older generations, or those who grew up reading and writing longer-form texts, where semicolons were a stylistic staple, tend to use them more naturally.' She adds, 'Since around the year 2000, which is roughly when Gen Z was born, semicolon use in books has dropped significantly.' 28% of younger people reported never using a semicolon at all. 39% said they rarely used them. Only 11% of young people described themselves as regular semicolon users. Zambelli tells us that even though they might not use it very often, Gen Z still see the value in the semicolon. 'From our research, Gen Z's struggle with the semicolon clearly comes from a lack of confidence, rather than a rejection,' she shares. 67% of Gen Z say they see the value in the punctuation mark, despite not being inclined to use it often. 'That gap between perceived value and actual usage points to confusion rather than disinterest.' Still, Zambelli warns, the trend could be part of a vicious cycle. 'The less you see something used correctly, the less likely you are to instinctively understand how it works – a vicious cycle of sorts. 'If that trend continues, we could expect future generations to feel even less familiar with the semicolon – not because it has fallen out of favour, but because it has simply faded from view.' 'Nothing Says Over 50' Like Following This 1 Grammar Rule, Experts Say Here's Why Boomers Keep Using Ellipses In Text (And Why It Makes You Panic) What You Call This Time May Reveal Your Age, Language Expert Says
Telegraph
19-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The semi-colon is an essential tool for any serious writer
Reading good prose should be like listening to a well-constructed piece of music: it should have rhythm; it should have cadences; in short, it should have style. In that sentence I have used the four principal marks of punctuation: the colon, the semi-colon, the comma and the full stop. Yet, it is reported, the semi-colon is dying out. The reason why is simple. The teaching of English in our schools in recent decades has been dismal. There is little attempt to teach grammar seriously, and therefore punctuation becomes disregarded. Used properly, punctuation serves two purposes. It helps avoid ambiguity (as in the famous example of 'eats shoots and leaves'), but it also, as I have stated above, makes prose a pleasure to read. My first sentence illustrates the classic usage of the semicolon: that of breaking up a list following a colon. Colons that precede a series of separate clauses do not inevitably require those clauses to be separated by semi-colons, however. I used semi-colons in the first sentence to give emphasis to the points I was making. In my second sentence I also use a colon, but the subsequent clauses are not separated by semi-colons, but rather by commas. This was because the list contained short clauses, and stylistically to have punctuated them with semi-colons would have created a staccato effect; and if you take the view, as great writers from Shakespeare and Milton onwards usually have, that the musicality of the language is one of its great attributes and perhaps its greatest aid to communication, then the semi-colon becomes highly useful. I used the mark again in that last sentence, because I felt that the argument contained in the two clauses was too intertwined for them to be separated by something as brutal as a full stop. Short sentences are commendable; but to write in them entirely again creates that machine-gun effect of delivering prose that is not always desirable. The structure may work in advertising copy, or in news bulletins, but if a writer seeks to compose something that people actually enjoy reading, variety is the key. Sadly, some people today confuse the colon and semi-colon, using the rather aggressive former mark when they should be resorting to the more serene latter one. Another advantage of the semi-colon is that it makes the reader pause slightly more than a comma would, sometimes to dramatic effect. Virginia Woolf's use of the mark has been widely noted, and seldom did she deploy it more usefully than in the opening pages of Mrs Dalloway, when her heroine is walking briskly around a busy Westminster on a summer's morning shopping for a party she is throwing that evening. As a consequence, she is in a heightened emotional state. Mrs Woolf describes the scene superbly: 'In people's eyes; in the swing, tramp and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands, barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of an aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.' It is hard to envisage this vividly descriptive passage being punctuated in any other way than using the semi-colon as the base of its structure. Mrs Dalloway herself is somewhat unhinged, and the sheer intensity of what she sees and feels is perfectly conveyed by her punctuation, as is the build-up to the climax of her perception. Not every writer is, or should be, a Virginia Woolf: but the semi-colon remains an essential tool for the serious writer, professional or amateur. It conveys in different ways nuance, tension and clarity: but above all it conveys a sense of style; and in this drab world, an assured style of writing that gives the reader pleasure is precious indeed.
Telegraph
19-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Why the semicolon could die out
It is a piece of punctuation that has divided writers and authors for centuries. Novelists including Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen have not shied away from using them, but that has not stopped critics branding writers who use them 'an embarrassment to their families and friends'. Now the semicolon could be dying out, according to research. Although once a central part of punctuation, usage of the semi-colon has almost halved over the past 20 years following Tony Blair's New Labour heyday, according to the makers of language-learning app Babbel. Young people who do not know how to use semicolons are behind the decline, the research suggests. Babbel used Google Ngram, a specialised version of the search engine that searches five million English-language books, to look up how often semicolons had appeared in British English between the year 2000 and 2022. They were used after one in every 205 words in 2000 but now follow just one in every 390 words, a decline of 47 per cent since the millennium. More than half (54 per cent) of young Britons surveyed by the app company do not know the rules around correct usage of semicolons, while 28 per cent simply do not use the mark at all in their writing. Sofia Zambelli, a spokesman for the app company, said: 'Our findings reveal that the semicolon is an 'endangered' punctuation mark; abandoned by many British writers who might have been expected to showcase its value, and often misunderstood by younger generations. 'Our data shows that Gen Z is not rejecting the semicolon; rather, they fear using it incorrectly. 'The semicolon, in particular, presents a challenge for many English learners. Whilst searching for best-use cases to illustrate the practicality and beauty of the semicolon, we found many historical texts but fewer contemporary examples.' The year 1781 was found to be the peak of its deployment, Babbel claimed, with one of the marks to be found, on average, every 90 words in continuous prose. Ben Jonson, the 16th-century English poet and contemporary of Shakespeare, described the semicolon as a 'somewhat longer breath' designed to introduce a pause into a sentence, bridging the gap between a full stop and the shorter interval introduced by the comma. Modern grammatical rules dictate that the semicolon is used to conjoin two separate clauses into a single sentence without the use of a conjunction. A famous example from English literature comes from the opening line of Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities: 'It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.' The versatile mark can also be used to lay out a list in prose without resorting to bulleted or numbered points. The University of Sussex gives three firm rules for the semicolon's usage in other scenarios: 'The two sentences are felt to be too closely related to be separated by a full stop; there is no connecting word which would require a comma, such as and or but; the special conditions requiring a colon are absent.' Italian humanists are believed to be the inventors of the semicolon, with a Venetian treatise about Mount Etna published in the year 1494 being its first appearance in writing according to Paris Review magazine. 'It was born into a time period of writerly experimentation and invention, a time when there were no punctuation rules, and readers created and discarded novel punctuation marks regularly,' Cecelia Watson wrote in the periodical, giving a précis of her 2019 book which she simply titled Semicolon. Illustrating the punctuation mark's usage in a review of Ms Watson's tome, the New Yorker magazine's Mary Norris added in the same year: 'I don't hate semicolons; I hate writing about semicolons.'
