Is there a consensus on the grammatical relationship between emoticons and punctuation? [more inside]
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - 37 answers

What is the origin of using asterisks to bracket a self-referential action statement? [more inside]
posted on Dec 8, 2007 - 27 answers

How do you punctuate an elliptical sentence structure? 1) Paul ate the tuna casserole; Mary, the taco salad. OR 2) Paul ate the tuna casserole, Mary the taco salad. I'm feeling frustrated that I'm coming across many published examples that I find confusing to read!
posted on Sep 13, 2007 - 36 answers

My eight year old wrote her latest poem, then asked about the subtleties of poetic punctuation (commas, periods, breaks ... and why such decisions are made... help! ). The poem is included, as of course ... [more inside]
posted on Jun 5, 2007 - 32 answers

I would like to know about the peculiarities in eighteenth-century writing. [more inside]
posted on Apr 16, 2007 - 10 answers

What is the proper punctuation for this slogan? [more inside]
posted on Apr 13, 2007 - 19 answers

I find myself fascinated with the intricacies of typography, punctuation, character sets etc. What books should a newbie read to become a connoisseur on these matters? [more inside]
posted on Apr 11, 2007 - 15 answers

Which heavy metal bands have umlauts in their names? Apart from Mötley Crüe and Motörhead, of course.
posted on Mar 30, 2007 - 21 answers

Anyone know anything at all about Adobe GoLive's use of -type HTML tags? Its insertion of these tags around dates, places, etc is causing extra spaces to pop up, throwing off proper punctuation and basically just making copytext look bad. [more inside]
posted on Jan 9, 2007 - 4 answers

What has happened to people being able to properly use a single period to end a sentence? [more inside]
posted on Dec 13, 2006 - 73 answers

In this article, a quotation reads "What is unique about Harry S Truman's name? His middle initial doesn't need a period after it". Why not?
posted on Nov 2, 2006 - 21 answers

I just realized (I'm fairly slow that way) that suddenly, and without fanfare, every language on Earth, excepting North-Korean and maybe a smattering of others, has acquired mood punctuation i.e. emoticons. Much like a ? indicates that the preceding sentence was a question, a jocular sentence is marked with a :)
Now, here comes my question. Are there any languages that have mood punctuation that pre-exists the internet? Or something similar? Markings that indicate a mood, feeling or emotion in any way? [more inside]
posted on Aug 4, 2006 - 21 answers

How do I end a sentence that's a list item? [more inside]
posted on Jun 14, 2006 - 20 answers

How do type an upside down question mark in Outlook Express? (for Spanish class)
posted on Jan 28, 2005 - 15 answers

PunctuationFilter: I'm writing the copy for a CD insert booklet in which the title of a book is mentioned. Typically, I'd italicize it, but the entire piece is already in italics. What's the standard here?
posted on Dec 6, 2004 - 18 answers

When (and where, and maybe why) did people start doing this ? Is it mostly a UK/Europe thing ? Is it only occasional or a valid trend now ?
(Another question about a grammar anomaly, but I'm not complaining this time, only curious. This one only occurs in informal [Internet] communication and for some reason I enjoy it: a space between sentence end and final punctuation, when punctuation is a '!' or '?' Mostly UK- and Ireland-ers do it, like sgt serenity [a mad Scotsman] here.)
posted on Mar 27, 2004 - 22 answers

People in my company often use a period instead of a question mark at the end of an interrogative sentence. I pointed this out to an old boss as I was proofing one of his e-mails, and he told me this is standard custom now in business communication. Is this so? What the hell?
posted on Mar 25, 2004 - 45 answers

So, I want to type in Spanish [More]
posted on Feb 4, 2004 - 5 answers

Why does Outlook convert an ellipsis (...) to a question mark (?) ? This is happening on outgoing emails -- I only can tell it's happening when people reply to me and I see the email I sent in the body of their reply. It does not appear in the saved copy on my machine. I use Word as my email text editor.
posted on Dec 10, 2003 - 4 answers