Path: utzoo!hoptoad!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!markh
From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: alt.flame
Subject: Re: Theological Debates
Summary: Punctuation
Keywords: Comma
Message-ID: <4080@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jan 88 01:25:21 GMT
References: <4032@uwmcsd1.UUCP> <14193@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <4062@uwmcsd1.UUCP> <514@gethen.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@uwmcsd1.UUCP
Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Followup-To: Remedial Courses
Distribution: alt.flame
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 32

In article <514@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes:
>markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>>
>>     I can see why there's such a demand in colleges for remedial courses for 
>>incoming high-school graduates.
>>
>>     Maybe, I ought to clarify myself, as there seem to be those who haven't
            ^
       This is correct usage, given my intentions.  A comma denotes a pause, it
was a pause that was intended here.  Are you sure YOU do not need a remedial 
course?  You've probably been listening to proscriptivists too long ( those are 
the ones who would tell you how to live your life if they could get away with 
it.)

>>fully mastered English semantics.
>
>Maybe on, the other hand; you could, just, take a remedial course,
>in punctuation?
>
>-- 
>Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
>{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
>        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
>gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame 

     I suggest you take your quotation to heart.  You've just given a dogmatic
point of view concerning the use of punctuation (called "proscriptivism"). Read
up on the literature and you'll see how the proscriptivists have contaminated 
the English language with elements of Latin syntax.  They even managed to 
arbitrarily decide that the contraction for "am not" (which was perfectly 
accepted until they came along) was a mark of uneducated speech.  But I ain't
going to ever use something that sounds as inane as "aren't" for "am not".