Apostrophes have almost disappeared.

The Chicago Manual is The Book for the academy. Newspapers have their
own style manuals. (Big newspapers do their own; the AP's manual is
used by most smaller papers.) These show the changes very clearly.
Decades ago, newspapers probably influenced those changes: the copy
desk was always happier to take out punctuation than to add it. Now,
when even academics use texting abbreviations (btw, imho, etc.) in
their emails and receive them in students' papers, who under, say, 50
wants to bother? And, if you're slicing the newsroom budget, wouldn't
the copy desk be the first to go?

A slightly political issue lurks here: The older style of punctuation
reads as elitist, etc., etc. I needn't elaborate the point.

Susan Holahan



On Jan 19, 2009, at 9:39 AM, Mark Weiss wrote:

> Nothing official, but the Chicago Manual of Style is almost so. It's
> now in its 15th edition, and almost 1000 pages long. Problem is, it
> keeps changing the rules. So, the plural and possessive of my last
> name is now Weiss's instead of Weiss'. The copyeditors for my Cuban
> anthology adhered to it unquestioningly, which means that I had to
> stet thousands (I'm not exaggerating) of things. I and about half my
> translators use "toward" or "towards" at will the other half
> consistently "toward." This is obviously a musical decision. The
> manual prefers "toward," and thinks "towards" is a British
> dialectical usage. Not so, but the editors corrected every instance.
> Bloody bother.
>
> Mark
>
> At 09:06 AM 1/19/2009, you wrote:
>> Yes, hyphens are definitely out - other than stitching together
>> double
>> barrelled adjectives of unusual pairing.
>>
>> In Australia we have a national publication called the Style Manual
>> which
>> gives us the latest official decrees on such matters. Do other
>> countries
>> have such a thing?
>>
>> 'Less is more' now applies to punctuation - perhaps 'less
>> punctuation, more
>> ambiquity' ...
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>>
>> 2009/1/19 bj omanson <[log in to unmask]>
>>
>> > My wife has taught writing-intensive courses to college students
>> for over
>> > thirty years. Progressively, over that time, she has seen less
>> and less
>> > punctuation and fewer hyphens, and now spends much of her time
>> and effort
>> > fighting to resurrect their use.
>> >
>> > Conversely, in my recent (and first) experience with a university
>> press
>> > copy-editor, the revisions to my manuscript consisted primarily
>> of having
>> > much of my punctuation and virtually all of my hyphens stripped
>> away.
>> >
>> > One feels as beseiged from above as from below.
>> >
>> > bj
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Christopher C Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
>> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> > Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 7:20 AM
>> > Subject: Re: Inverted commas and such
>> >
>> >
>> > Actually, there may be a reverse lesson in this for myself, in
>> that I am
>> > far too anxious about the quality of my writings. Sure, my
>> current book
>> > is not ready for a publisher to see but it really doesn't need
>> that much
>> > revision as to seem an overwhelming task. And I see a way forward
>> for
>> > the verse collection as well.
>> >
>> > Not sure if this makes sense within the context but... ask me if
>> need
>> > be.
>> >
>> > best, Chris Jones.
>> >
>> > PS. Using Unicode (UTF8) may also play with punctuation in
>> unintended
>> > ways. I don't have the Microsoft character encoding.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Andrew
>> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/