Strand 3/Conventions – Post 7: New Punctuation…☺

We know that language is always changing. Pronunciation changes perhaps faster than other kinds of grammatical changes since it doesn’t match up with the written language very well anyway; so you can say “bought” pretty much however you want, as long as you have something close to a “b” sound at the beginning and something close to a “t” sound at the end. We’re slower to accept morphological and syntactic changes since you can see them in writing. If you say I seen him, that looks a lot different from I saw him, so we notice these variations more. And until recently, I’d say that our punctuation system was pretty set. You can read a very brief history of punctuation in this post, and I’ve also written about how standards of punctuation can vary, as mentioned here, but in general, our system of punctuation has been fairly fixed since the 18th century. So the new punctuation is really exciting! We have old punctuation being used in new ways, and new symbols being incorporated into our punctuation system (emoticons).

Slash/ - Anne Curzan has written about slash, and it was even a runner-up in the Word of the Year vote by the American Dialect Society. The / used to be a not so frequent punctuation mark, but has come in to the spoken language much more frequently of late, and into the written language as slash, written out as a word like that. You can read more about this new conjunction here. What’s especially interesting is that this newish (it’s not clear how new - a former student just wrote me yesterday that she heard a Friends episode from 2002 when Ross says, "So much for my dinosaur slash Amelia Earhart theme park,” so it’s been around at least since then with this newish meaning. Thanks, Mary!) use in which speaking the punctuation (and writing it as slash rather than /) seems to capture something kind of different from how we understand the punctuation mark in writing. And getting a new conjunction is big news, because we just don’t get those very often, like not in 1000 years.

These things: “” - These so-called quotation marks have long been used to mark things other than quotations. I mentioned here the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks which has examples like this one:

. Why are these funny? Let’s first consider the three primary uses for these little marks, “”: (1) to mark direct quotations, (2) as scare quotes, which serve to alert the reader that either the word or phrase is being used in an unusual way or that the writer doesn’t accept the phrase or is using it ironically, or (3) to emphasize, which is what most of the Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks’ examples are intending to express. OK, so why are they funny? Because we can read them as scare quotes, even though we know that’s not their intended use: Excuse our “Emptiness”

It seems that all of these writers can’t be wrong in their use of this bit of punctuation. It’s simply less established than the other two uses of the “” marks. It’s true that the emphatic “”s show up a lot more in hand-written signs where we don’t have the benefit of bold or increasing font size in a systematic way, so these marks “” are given yet another duty. But the emphatic use is not something that was likely ever taught. It’s come about out of a need; writers’ ingenuity comes into play. In speaking, of course, we’d have other ways of making the point, with intonation, pitch, and facial expressions. In print, we have to make do with other methods. Would underlining be preferable? Why or why not?

Ellipses… - My students brought the changing meaning of ellipses to my attention. We all know the basic use of these within a quotation where you’ve left some of the stuff out: Harry Potter said, “In school if you make a mistake, you can just try again…but out there, you don’t know what that’s like.” That’s not new or interesting. The new use is mostly in texting. Texting has brought about all kinds of appropriation of existing punctuation, and in some cases, these are gaining new meanings. So one student mentioned a text he received from his dad which read something like “Give me a call when you get a chance…” The student was worried; he interpreted the ellipses as a marker of anger or disappointment. Other students agreed that they would too. When he talked with his dad, though (abandoning texting in favor of a voice call since he thought Dad was mad), Dad was fine and hadn’t intended that meaning at all. I think I got the dad’s intended meaning from the ellipses, though: this isn’t urgent, call when you can, no big deal. The ellipses as used in text messages have completely different meanings for these two writers.

The Period. - Similarly, there’s an article here on the changing meaning of the period in texting and other informal online communication: When there is a shift in topic, a line break can do the job. Most texters would agree that

I’m home now
what’s for dinner?

can sound a lot friendlier than

I’m home now. What’s for dinner?

The question I like to pose to my students is how they know all this. Where do their ideas about the meanings of the punctuation and the contexts in which they are appropriate come from? How are these standards and new uses emerging? My students – and yours too – definitely have a sense of when certain marks are appropriate and when they are not. And because some of these uses are relatively new, we’re not all on the same page, so to speak, and so misunderstandings can emerge. I just think this is a cool way to begin to explore the notion of standardization and language change and to realize that now, as always, we the people are the creators of the standards. And it’s important to drive home that the students are really savvy about these evolving rules of etiquette and conventions. And, in fact, students are knowledgeable not only about conventions of texting, but also about when to use various genres of writing styles (despite the myth that texting language is ruining “language skills”. See here for a LanguageLog post on that). Focusing on their knowledge is a good way to introduce these topics - You’re good at this! Now let’s explore what you know! Linguist John McWhorter, in this New York Times piece, writes the following about texting and email:

“…the looseness and creativity of these new ways of writing are a sign of a new sophistication in our society. This becomes clear when we understand that in the proper sense, e-mail and texting are not writing at all….Keyboard technology, allowing us to produce and receive written communication with unprecedented speed, allows something hitherto unknown to humanity: written conversation. In this sense, [emails and texts] are not “writing” in the sense we are accustomed to. They are fingered speech.”

I think there are lots of conversations and activities that could emerge from the info in this post, but here are a few:

Activity: Have students consider their uses of capitalization in texting, in email, and in other online communication. Do they ever not capitalize the first letter of their name? If so, when? What factors enter in to that choice? What about ALL CAPS? Would they ever use that in a message, and if, so, what is the intended effect?

Activity: Have your students consider their use of acronyms and abbreviations such as lol, brb, or ttyl. Do they use them? If so, in what situations? Have them come up with other acronyms and abbreviations that are completely integrated into the language, such as radar, laser, and scuba or DVR or tv, or ID. If they aren’t aware of what the full forms of these words and phrases are, have them look those up in a dictionary. (Many of my students report that their parents, in their 40s and 50s, for the most part, are much more consistent users of abbreviations such as u for you and ur for you’re or your, and also of the acronmyms.)

Activity: What is the future of emoticons? Emoticons offer us an opportunity to express emotion in writing in a way that is otherwise really cumbersome. We can convey that something is ironic or silly or sad, without using words. We can soften the way that something is read. Now, the use of emoticons is restricted to texts, chat, and some email communication, but have your students discuss whether these features might ever enter into more formal written discourse. What would be the benefits? Drawbacks?

Oh, and no discussion of punctuation is complete without mention of the interrobang. My students always lament its lack of popularity. I tell them they have the power to make it happen.

Strand 3/Conventions – Post 6: Punctuation Variation: the Oxford Comma

At first, I didn’t think there was really anything interesting to say about the comma with items in a series, but I think it’s actually a good example of how we latch on to some of the early things we were taught, and then we stick to these things, often passionately, just because. Also, even if you’re not interested in this serial comma, the Common Core State Standards are. It shows up here for fifth grade: but is asterisked as one of those “Language Progressive Skills” that “are particularly likely to require continued attention in higher grades as they are applied to increasingly sophisticated writing and speaking.” They suggest revisiting this skill in grades 4-8. That seems really strange to me since it’s so straightforward. I guess it’s the lack of a clear yes or no/right or wrong strategy that bothers people.

So you know the scoop: there are two ways of writing items in a series, with either a comma before and or no comma before and (or other conjunctions).

The kid ate the bread with a peanut butter, jelly, and a banana.

It’s the comma after jelly that can either be there or not, depending on what your fourth grade teacher told you. That really seems to be how people decide - whatever they were taught first is what they stick to. So this comma is sometimes called the Oxford comma because Oxford University Press uses it - and they’re very fancy, so maybe that’s a good reason to go with it. Then again, those Brits do other funny things with punctuation, like put the “end punctuation” outside the quotation marks. (Wait, that actually makes a lot more sense.) So what do American style guides say? The Chicago Manual of Style recommends its use, while The Associated Press Style Guide (and therefore most journalistic writing) says to avoid it, unless doing so results in ambiguity. Consider the following sentence:

I went to the LSA meeting with Anne, a linguist, and a horseback rider.

This is ambiguous, of course, because it is not clear whether a linguist is an appositive describing Anne, or is the second person in a list of three different people. When we remove the final comma, we lose the possibility that a linguist is an appositive, but still have the possibility that we have three separate people attending the meeting.

I went to the LSA meeting with Anne, a linguist and a horseback rider.

And we now have the possibility that Anne is both a linguist and a horseback rider (and in fact, if you know Anne, she is), so there is ambiguity both with and without the final comma. We can, of course, change the wording to remove the ambiguity.

And this particular Anne and I are good examples of the two different acceptable standards here. I’m a consistent user of the Oxford comma, and Anne is a consistent user of the no Oxford comma. We write a lot of things together, so I put them in and she takes them out, or she leaves them out and I put them in, and then we have to wait for some copyeditor to make the call.

Let’s see, a good activity for this funny little punctuation rule is to go on an Oxford comma (or lack thereof) treasure hunt to see where it appears and where it doesn’t in published writing. And have your students look for the possibility of ambiguity as well. And if this wasn’t a blog targeted at middle school, I would provide you a link to the Vampire Weekend song “Oxford Comma,” but it might get you in trouble if you play it at school. (The first line of the song would have made a much better title for this post too.)

Strand 1/Grammar: Lesson 20 - Restrictive and Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses - and punctuation again

Relative clauses are clauses (so they contain a subject and a predicate) that describe, or modify, a noun. They fall into two classes, restrictive and nonrestrictive. The restrictive ones limit, or “restrict” what the noun refers to.

The realtor [who is selling our house] is really funny.
The place [where we love to go on vacation] is usually Orcas Island.
The child [who is juggling] wants to be in the circus.

So the bracketed clauses here pick out which realtor, place, and child.

Nonrestrictive relative clauses, on the other hand – though they might provide similar information – do not restrict the reference of the noun in the same way as restrictive relative clauses. In writing, nonrestrictive relative clauses are set off by commas, and you can also usually detect “comma intonation” in a speaker’s voice, distinguishing the two types.

restrictive: The PlayStation which we bought recently from a friend wasn’t too expensive.

nonrestrictive: The PlayStation, which we bought recently from a friend, wasn’t too expensive.

The restrictive relative clause, which (or that - I’ll come back to that) we bought recently from a friend, limits which PlayStation we’re referring to, to the one we bought recently from a friend. The non-restrictive relative clause, on the other hand, does not restrict the reference of the noun PlayStation; it isn’t information that distinguishes this PlayStation from other ones. That we bought the PS from a friend is simply extra, incidental information.

This difference between restrictive and nonrestrictive is really revealed when you have a noun that there is only one of - a proper noun. In that case, restricting that already singular set is weird, but using a non-restrictive clause is fine.

Hailey, who I saw on the bus yesterday, has a new graphing calculator.
??Hailey who I saw on the bus yesterday has a new graphing calculator.

This second sentence could only work if there is more than one Hailey and this is picking out the intended Hailey - the “on the bus Hailey” not the “next door neighbor Hailey” or something.

Activity. Identify the relative clauses in the following sentences and then determine whether they are restrictive or non-restrictive by putting commas around the non-restrictive ones. Many of them could be both, but the meaning would be slightly different. If that’s the case, briefly explain the difference.

The kid from your class who has that cool dog is walking towards us.
The store only allows returns that have the tags on and a receipt.
The sunglasses which I bought last month already broke.
Some gum is in my bag which is on the table.
The girl who is going to buy our old bikes is coming over tomorrow.
Sue who is going to buy our old bikes is coming over tomorrow.

There is a prescriptive rule of writing that suggests that which should be used with non-restrictive relative clauses and that with restrictive relative clauses. This rule, however, varies, by style guides and editors, and is also a fairly recent restriction. Both which and that are and have been common for centuries with restrictive relative clauses. Most speakers and writers would agree that it sounds odd, however, to use that in a non-restrictive relative clause; you probably wouldn’t write (or say)

Sushi, that I love, is on sale at the market.

MS Word seems to be reinforcing this rule, though. When its grammar checker finds which not preceded by a comma, it suggests the change to that. It’s not incorrect, however, to have which in restrictive relative clauses. British English conventions care even less about this. Oxford Dictionaries writes, “In British English, restrictive relative clauses can be introduced by that or which when they are referring to things rather than people.”

The coat that/which Dan had on yesterday was new.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about this debate - whether which should be used in restrictive relative clauses - can be found here.

It’s a question which you can think about and analyze for yourself. Sometimes I just think which sounds better (but Word has given me a green squiggle line for that last one!).