very OT: it's vs. its / was Re: tube digital interest

[David Griffith]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On Dec 14, 2009, at 2:31 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
>> There are lots of rules in English grammar/spelling that are "unnecessary." 
>> That doesn't mean I don't cringe when I get a text message that reads "hey 
>> u, wat r u up 2??"  Nor does it mean I'm not going to try to preserve some 
>> of these rules... Sure, I know what the sender means, that doesn't mean I 
>> have to like the way it was said.  (Flash forward 50 years to when the 
>> English alphabet only has 12 letters...)
>
> The recent death of the question mark is one that drives me ape shit. 
> I lose count of the number of times in a day that I read questions 
> ending with a period.

One way I deal with this is to see which of the two interpretations would 
be more embarassing to the writer, then choose the more embarassing one. 
"What?  You asked me a question?  Looks more like it was a statement.  Do 
you remember what a question mark is?".  A similar approach was used to 
break someone of horribly mangling the word "cadmium".  After being 
offered cat snacks (kitty yums) several times instead of batteries, he 
started to clean up his speech.

This reminds me of a film I watched in elementary school.  It was about a 
king who decided to outlaw punctuation and the subsequent mess.

"I'm bored!  I know!  I'll pass a law.  Bring me the dictionary!  I'll 
pass a law forbidding...  <flips pages>  forbidding...  <flips pages and 
covers eyes> forbidding <peeks> PUNCTUATION!".


-- 
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?