Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Punctuation Problems

I've learned that I really am an English teacher. I never wanted to be that stereotypical English teacher who caused people to be on their guard when writing or speaking for fear that I would pull out the red pen. I do have to complain a little about the grammar and punctuation people use when writing online. I got an email today from an educated adult man who sent it to the wrestling list, parents coaches, coaches wives, wrestling fans etc. I had to read the last sentence twice before I understood what he was saying because for him apparently, capitalization and punctuation in email are optional. I am pretty casual about language. I have comma splice issues, run on sentences, (the same thing really), misplaced modifiers and other grammar issues. I draw the line at capitalization and punctuation. I mean come on, using a period, question mark or exclamation mark is a bare minimum requirement for writing a note or a comment. I have lost track of the number of comments I have read on other sites which lack capital letters and basic sentence ending punctuation. That's all I am asking, start a sentence with a capital letter. End a sentence with punctuation. I can handle misspelled words, although with spell check that seems a bit too easy to avoid, but I have done it so I will forgive that. I need to know where the sentence starts and where the sentence ends. Is it a question? Is it a statement. Maybe throw an apostrophe in on those contractions, is proofreading for the correct spelling of to too much? I will get off the soap box now. Rant over.

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