Baldur

The largest tattoo is on my back, a flying monkey with wings that span from shoulder to shoulder.
Elsewhere there are a couple of large skulls with crossbones, a few doubloons and a tribute to my football team, the San Francisco 49ers.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to William Hung, Orlando Bloom, Patrick Dempsey, Trace Adkins, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brandon Tartikoff, Rakesh Sharma, Gaj Singh, Rip Taylor, Charles Nelson Reilly, Liz Anderson, Robert Stack, Alfred Fuller, Sophie Tucker and Horatio Alger Jr.

Baldur

Here is a question for my readers. It may just be a matter of writing style, but the end of my previous post bothers me somewhat.
When ending a sentence with an abbreviation should one use two periods or one?
....Sophie Tucker and Horatio Alger Jr..
or
....Sophie Tucker and Horatio Alger Jr.

Baldur realizes that he technically should use a comma between the name and the Jr.
The proper way to write it is really 'Horatio Alger,Jr.' but I just disagree with the necessity for that bit of punctuation and have always refused to use it.

inked_gemini

When the period in an abbreviation comes at end of the sentence, that period also serves to end the sentence.

"...Sophie Tucker and Horatio Alger Jr." is correct.

However, if the abbreviation comes at the end of a question then it is appropriate to use both the period and also a question mark.

Is today the birthday of Horatio Alger Jr.?

The same rule applies for exclamations.

inked_gemini

I should add that this could be considered a matter of writing style. Logically one should use a period to signify the end of the abbreviation and another to mark the end of the sentence. Using two periods would not be incorrect.

It is just a conventional matter of not wanting to be redundant I suppose.

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Tuning into Channel Baldur, when time allows, is always a pleasure ... always something of interest / amusement.

'Happy to hear you are expecting your first grandchild, Baldur (Grandad), and how I envy you. However, I understand the 'bonus' of being able to return them to their parents at the end of the day. Dragon's description of your recent snowfall had me in stitches. As for that depth of snow, it was common in my childhood but such heavy falls have been rare in recent decades ... until now. Snow tyres (UK English spelling) may be used regularly in the north, where temperatures are lower, but in the south few of us own such luxuries. This year has seen a marked interest in them and if the current trend in climate conditions is here to stay, they will be on the 'necessity' list.

Todays spam has been reported but am always grateful when Baldur has beaten me to it. Happy New Year and good health to you all.

polenta

I find inked gemini's answer very didactic. I wonder another thing. Sometimes we write something like:

My mother went on and on ...

At the end of the sentence we see THREE periods or full stops(???!"!!!). I've seen this punctuation mark many times but don't know its name. Maybe some of you knows it. Another punctuation mark whose name I don't know is :

My book is new.
" " has a beautiful cover.
" " is on the table.

How do you call these marks that tell you you are repeating "my book"?
Thanks in advance.

inked_gemini

Didactic indeed. I spent many years in college trying to figure out what I wanted to study, and I must have changed my major a dozen times. I ended up with a degree in English Literature where grammar was very much a focus. I found grammar studies to be incredibly boring, but I do remember some of the lessons as they were taught to me.

The three periods at the end of a sentence are collectively called an ellipsis (plural is ellipses). Ellipses are used, when quoting text, to indicate that a word has been omitted intentionally. But they are also used for expressive writing to indicate a pause in speech. If placed at the end of a sentence, it could signify that the speech is trailing off. In relation to Baldur’s question, if you have an ellipsis at the end of the sentence, you should still use a period as well, equaling four total dots.

The two little marks used to indicate that words are being repeated are called ditto marks (ditto meaning “as already stated”). Ditto marks are described simply as “two small marks.” Since there is no ditto mark key on a keyboard, people simply use quotation marks instead. However, ditto marks and quotation marks are not meant to be one in the same. You could also type two apostrophes to indicate a ditto mark.

Polenta used them correctly in her example. There should be one ditto mark for each word that is meant to be repeated, and they are usually placed beneath the repeated text.

Qsilv

lol... inked's explanations are a treat.

And it really is a mix of logic and aesthetics and pure pragmatism.

Worth just adding that conventions change over time with technological advances. Typesetters of the old school cringe at much of what gets produced in today's digital world (especially when it was first starting out and the fonts were a mathematical disaster!).

But paperback books were already beginning to use quite different spacing conventions than hardbacks, and they both had to be tinkered with a lot by the editors to avoid too many blank pages in a signature (stitched group divisible by 4), and not to have "widows or orphans" (single words dangling on a page or even at the end of a paragraph). You may have also noticed that commas are reduced to an absolute minimum in modern novels?

Paper conservation's not an issue on a webpage, but there are other issues that crop up, such as not being ABLE to create an extra wide space between words here in the TD forum! (The software just turns 'em back into one.) No kidding... there used to be a rule that you typed two spaces after a period. Pfft... THAT's long gone.

Fwiw, my mom was determined I should NOT be an artist, and contrived an English major for me in hopes I'd wind up being a teacher. I have to admit, the knowledge has helped me enormously... but... well, although I'm perfectly capable of writing formally "correct" business papers in both American and UK King's English, in places like online forums and email and even the increasingly rare, private, handwritten letter... my revenge has been to use punctuation, grammar, language itself as a sort of art form!

;>

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This subject makes interesting reading. Thanks for your last sentence, Q. It makes me feel far less guilty about my deviations from what I was taught at school.

polenta

Inked gemini, you are a darling. I had heard about ellispsis and thought it was called like that but wasn't sure. As for the DITTO MARKS, it's the first time I've heard of that. As you say, these marks look very much like quotation marks, which I have heard can also be called inverted commas. You really taught me a lot.

polenta

Inked, I've heard things about hyphenation in English but it's not something even very advanced learners are taught. I've also read that separating a word at the end of a line is up to a publisher or editor, that it has to do with printing and not with grammar or punctuation. In other books I've seen that some authors discourage the fact of separating words at the end of a line.
This thing is VERY EASY in Spanish because it has to do with separation of syllables. I would say anybody can just do it by pronouncing a word. Do you have any advice to give?

Baldur

Baldur is learning much here today. My English writing skills were beaten into me at a young age by sadistic nuns.
They were never much for explaining language rules. Everything was driven into our brains by repetition.

Baldur

I am not running at 100% today. To avoid giving too much information Baldur can divulge that here in the Northeast flulike symptoms coupled with intestinal distress has been an issue this Winter.
Luckily I didn't get the flulike symptoms too.

Despite this I've needed to attend to some snow shoveling over the past 2 days. The crisp fresh air has felt good.

polenta

Congratulations Baldur on losing 50 pounds and on keeping the weight loss. This is the most difficult thing.

Normal

Boo to sadistic nuns of all times and all places.
Hurray for Inked's didactic info. (Does anybody actually notice whether three dots or four?)
Double hurray for Q's war of revenge on rotten language.
I read our local paper with a red pen in hand, but never get around to sending in my examples of their horrendous errors, since there are simply too many.

Baldur

I have had to do a bit of snow shoveling these past two days. Robert needs access to his bird feeders and a perimeter around the foundation of the house should also be opened up after each storm. Otherwise some doors cannot be opened and the exhaust vent for our clothes dryer is dangerously blocked.
We pay a man to plow out our drive which is beyond the limits of what I think wise to shovel myself.
There is also an elderly woman next door (the 'widder') who requires assistance with these same matters.

Baldur

It's cat story time on Radio Baldur!

It has become apparent that Shakira (the mother cat at Boughbreak) is rather young herself. She is still rather playful.
She has spent many hours playing with several of the toys that were earmarked for her babies.
We have not had an adult cat before that was much interested in playthings, so this is rather curious.

Chloe is the more vocal of the kittens. She is forever chatting with us. This kitten makes a lot of noise as she is running about the house. From the sound alone you would think her a much larger animal, perhaps on the scale of a bison. If one hears: thump thump thump bang followed by the sound of breaking pottery it is Chloe.

Her brother Kyle is every bit as destructive but much more quiet. One does not hear him darting about the house. Silence followed by a loud bang and the sound of breaking pottery is more his style.
Robert has caught me calling this cat 'Mumbai' on several occasions. Indeed the kitten indicated that it is his proper name but Robert persists in referring to him as 'Kyle'. Oh well.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Samir Patel, Gene Snitsky, LL Cool J, Shepard Smith, Ernest Miller, Masanobu Fuchi, Jim Duggan, T-Bone Burnett, Shannon Lucid, Faye Dunaway, Allen Toussaint, Jack Jones, Guy Williams, Andy Rooney, Billy Butterfield, Mark Goodson, William Bendix, Sir Cecil Beaton, Hal Roach, Nina Rucci, Benedict Arnold, Emperor Nakamikado and Marcus Antonius.

inked_gemini

I myself have been entertaining the idea of adopting a cat. For the past two weeks, upon arriving at work, I have been greeted by a rather large orange tabby. She sits outside the back entrance of my place of employment, and she has a nasty habit of darting inside the door when anyone opens it. My co-workers and I have had to put her out several times a day.

She is a very affectionate cat. She must have had an owner as she is very comfortable being handled. She purrs at me whenever I pet her or pick her up. This past Tuesday she was sitting beneath a bench in our break-room, and I had to take her back out. I hated to put her outside as it was bitterly cold (the high that day was all of 9°F--about -12°C).

I have tried to propagandize each of my co-workers into taking her home but to no avail. And there has been talk circulating about calling animal control. Seems upper management thinks her presence is a nuisance.

I have made up my mind that if she is here today when I leave that I will scoop her up and take her home with me.

Now, I have a question. How would I know if she has had all of the required shots? Should I go ahead and provide vaccinations for her? And what about fleas? Should I buy medication to treat her for fleas and ticks? Baldur, how did you deal with these issues when you took in Shakira? I would like for the cat to be healthy and happy not only for the cat's sake but also my children's as I'm sure they will want to play with her.

It has been quite some time since I have had a pet in the home...