Re: Wikipedia entry on XyWrite

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Carl Distefano wrote:
I'm sorry, Patricia, but:

3. to mark a reflective pause or hesitation
I more or less considered that subsumed under the idea of
"breaking off", but, yes, it probably should be specified.

Also, to breach a convention doesn't necessarily imply ignorance of
the convention. It may equally imply awareness of the convention.
Writers breach linguistic conventions, advisedly, all the time.
True again. But believe me, an awful lot of people have not heard
the least little bit about grammar etc. I had an alleged copy
editor taking a course of mine some 5-6 years back who had no
idea what an interrogative pronoun was. Had never heard of them.
Also, conventions change with time. They... evolve
That's what everyone says when I try to maintain a standard. But
to argue that all change is good is as silly as to argue that all
change (in language or anything else) is bad. The question is
does the change serve the ends of whatever is changing? (Of
course, if you don't think anything has an end--Greek
Telos--that's a dumb question; but most of us, in practice if not
in theory, act on the assumption that human activities are
purposeful.) And if a linguistic (or punctuational) pattern has
evolved so as to permit greater precision, to let it evolve in
the direction of _less_ precision seems counterproductive. So
don't just tell me "Everybody does it; it's the Spirit of the
Age" ("...and worship the Event, the goddess history/ Whom your
fathers named the strumpet Fortune." C. S. Lewis). Show me how it
adds precision or clarity or even evocativeness to the language.
TEMPORAMUTANTURETNOSMUTAMURINILLIS
Yes, a very good example: the evolution that caused us to
separate each written word from the next was a good change. To
lose, e.g., the distinction between a comma and a semicolon would
be a bad one. (For the lack-Latins, Carl was quoting a tag from
Vergil that, written as we now write it, reads Termpora mutantur
et nos mutamur in illis, and translates The times are changed,
and we are changed with them.)
P.S. Russian lit is littered (pardon the alliteration)
>(Okay, so it's not literally alliteration. So sue me.)
Actually, I think ME alliterative poetry did allow for the
repetition of the consonant within words as well as at the
beginning. Certainly some later poets have done so.

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx