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Jan. 16th, 2009 04:57 pmToday I find it very hard to focus, so I'm taking a look at US punctuation. This is because I suddenly realised that I shall have one book this year in US punctuation and one in Australian. Tuesday (until 4 am) was spent with my publisher on the US one, so the size of the Pacific is clear to me right now. My new form of measuring the Pacific is in semi-colons. I could have used comma splices, because US friends refer to them frequently, but my publisher wasn't nearly as worried about them as she was about where I put my colons.
My suspicion is (having spent a full five minutes reading about US punctuation) is that Australians don't like comma splices either, by and large. We do use semi-colons differently: it's easy to see why she was worried. That isn't a problem. I don't mind how many dialects I appear in.
And that is the problem. Dialects have different vocabularies. It's as much a problem with musical terms as with grammar. I can never remember what a crotchet is in US parlance. Does the US even have hemi-demi-semi quavers? Punctuation and grammar terms look to be even more trying.
I was taught punctuation by description and example, not by labels. I explain problems with manuscripts (including my own) in terms of the sense the phrase or sentence makes to the reader and how it should be linked or delinked or bound tightly with its neighbours to communicate that sense. Very poetic I can wax about it, too.
I wouldn't know the correct terminology if you hit me over the head with it.
I know I don't do badly, because I see the corrections made to stuff of mine that gets published. Punctuation seldom figures. (Except on Tuesday night, obviously.)
I do impossibly awfully, however, when it comes to formal descriptions and labels. There's a good reason behind this. It's the sadness of life experience. Let me tell you the full desolateness of my tale.
Once I had to teach Old French. I did suggest to the university that I wasn't the world's best language teacher.
"But you can read it?"
"Yes." (think slow Australian drawl delivering the meaning "You're delusional. This is unlike you.")
"But you know the grammar."
"Yes." (think slow Australian drawl indicating "You do know that I don't have language teaching quals, because my CV is in front of you. You also know that teaching 300 years of language change and literature plus the language itself in 21 hours with students who have no incentive to do homework is kinda... ambitious." My drawl wasn't really up to communicating all of this - I need to work on it some more.)
"It's down in the program then, for next summer. You're a good teacher. It'll be fine."
My students had - between seven of them - three different sets of grammar terminology. It turned out that I had a fourth. My fourth was all in French because, as everyone knows, the standard way to teach Old French at university is in Modern French. My students didn't accept this as an excuse. They wanted Old French to match whatever they knew, even if it didn't. Some were reluctant to learn even what the cas regime was, because as one of them said "I never learned case systems."
Mostly I tried to explain what the language did and how it operated. Two students hated this. They wanted the grammar they had learned and nothing else. These were, of course, the students who had the single grammatical system for which I knew not a single formal descriptive term.
I so hated teaching that course. Despite everything, I got good end-of-session evaluations, but I have never reminded the university of this because I really, really don't want to teach a whole language in 21 hours using so many grammar sets, ever, ever, ever again.
Anyhow, when I realised I had to revise my punctuation, I checked usage and not terms. I don't care if I sound dead ignorant. It's all about writing something or editing something so the reader can make sense of it, not proving that I own magic words like 'comma slice.' Besides, my sad life experience has taught me that if I learn one set of terms then someone will come up with another five minutes later.
I thought you might be interested in knowing why I don't have those words. I also thought you might be interested to know that when The Art of Effective Dreaming and Life through Cellophane are sitting next to each other, you will be able to find cases of semi-colons in one that match colons in the other.
You're probably more interested in me trying to heat coffee up in the fridge five minutes ago. I'm not going to talk about that. It's better forgotten.
My suspicion is (having spent a full five minutes reading about US punctuation) is that Australians don't like comma splices either, by and large. We do use semi-colons differently: it's easy to see why she was worried. That isn't a problem. I don't mind how many dialects I appear in.
And that is the problem. Dialects have different vocabularies. It's as much a problem with musical terms as with grammar. I can never remember what a crotchet is in US parlance. Does the US even have hemi-demi-semi quavers? Punctuation and grammar terms look to be even more trying.
I was taught punctuation by description and example, not by labels. I explain problems with manuscripts (including my own) in terms of the sense the phrase or sentence makes to the reader and how it should be linked or delinked or bound tightly with its neighbours to communicate that sense. Very poetic I can wax about it, too.
I wouldn't know the correct terminology if you hit me over the head with it.
I know I don't do badly, because I see the corrections made to stuff of mine that gets published. Punctuation seldom figures. (Except on Tuesday night, obviously.)
I do impossibly awfully, however, when it comes to formal descriptions and labels. There's a good reason behind this. It's the sadness of life experience. Let me tell you the full desolateness of my tale.
Once I had to teach Old French. I did suggest to the university that I wasn't the world's best language teacher.
"But you can read it?"
"Yes." (think slow Australian drawl delivering the meaning "You're delusional. This is unlike you.")
"But you know the grammar."
"Yes." (think slow Australian drawl indicating "You do know that I don't have language teaching quals, because my CV is in front of you. You also know that teaching 300 years of language change and literature plus the language itself in 21 hours with students who have no incentive to do homework is kinda... ambitious." My drawl wasn't really up to communicating all of this - I need to work on it some more.)
"It's down in the program then, for next summer. You're a good teacher. It'll be fine."
My students had - between seven of them - three different sets of grammar terminology. It turned out that I had a fourth. My fourth was all in French because, as everyone knows, the standard way to teach Old French at university is in Modern French. My students didn't accept this as an excuse. They wanted Old French to match whatever they knew, even if it didn't. Some were reluctant to learn even what the cas regime was, because as one of them said "I never learned case systems."
Mostly I tried to explain what the language did and how it operated. Two students hated this. They wanted the grammar they had learned and nothing else. These were, of course, the students who had the single grammatical system for which I knew not a single formal descriptive term.
I so hated teaching that course. Despite everything, I got good end-of-session evaluations, but I have never reminded the university of this because I really, really don't want to teach a whole language in 21 hours using so many grammar sets, ever, ever, ever again.
Anyhow, when I realised I had to revise my punctuation, I checked usage and not terms. I don't care if I sound dead ignorant. It's all about writing something or editing something so the reader can make sense of it, not proving that I own magic words like 'comma slice.' Besides, my sad life experience has taught me that if I learn one set of terms then someone will come up with another five minutes later.
I thought you might be interested in knowing why I don't have those words. I also thought you might be interested to know that when The Art of Effective Dreaming and Life through Cellophane are sitting next to each other, you will be able to find cases of semi-colons in one that match colons in the other.
You're probably more interested in me trying to heat coffee up in the fridge five minutes ago. I'm not going to talk about that. It's better forgotten.