Lack of Punctuation

Marydoll

Oldnproud

Marydoll

As soon as I see a long unpunctuated post, without paragraphs, I don't read it. It hurts my eyes, trying to decipher it.
It is a pity, because it actually could be worth reading.

There was a poster on GN, who never used capital letters and as a fully paid up pedant, it seriously irritated me!

Are you sure that your use of commas is correct in your final sentence? 😉

I can only try my best, I'm afraid! 🤷‍♂️

I would never pull up a poster, nor single out anyone, who had made an error/ made an error. (sans comma)
In my book, that just wouldn't be acceptable. I keep those thoughts to myself.
None of us are perfect apart from yourself. 😉

I would never mention such a thing on any other forum, and even on this forum I only mentioned it because of the specific topic of the thread.

I apologise. I am genuinely sorry that I have upset you.
My only excuse - a weak one, on reflection - is that as you described yourself as a "fully paid up pedant", so I thought you might even be amused by what I had imagined was just hurried oversight.

Oldnproud

Marydoll

As soon as I see a long unpunctuated post, without paragraphs, I don't read it. It hurts my eyes, trying to decipher it.
It is a pity, because it actually could be worth reading.

There was a poster on GN, who never used capital letters and as a fully paid up pedant, it seriously irritated me!

Are you sure that your use of commas is correct in your final sentence? 😉

I can only try my best, I'm afraid! 🤷‍♂️

I would never pull up a poster, nor single out anyone, who had made an error/ made an error. (sans comma)
In my book, that just wouldn't be acceptable. I keep those thoughts to myself.
None of us are perfect apart from yourself. 😉

I find reading any long passage of prose - or indeed a post - without any punctuation incredibly tiring because as a child at school reading aloud, we were taught to “take a breath” at a comma and a full stop. So even reading silently, the habit has become ingrained. Stream of consciousness writing was never my favourite.
There are also those who punctuate with … then a bit …then another… then another bit…. That also makes me feel rushed.
Just why?
As for spurious capital letters, autocorrect has a lot to answer for, assuming the words bill, mark, bob, grace and others must be names and slipping in capital letters when I’m not looking. And don’t get me started on its/ it’s.
There are also posters who apparently dislike capital letters, even for proper nouns and I find myself googling to look up what a something or other is, only to find it’s a brand name.
OK , rant over!
But just for fun.

I’m not sure arrogance is the correct description GSM. In the case of two of my friends, both are poorly educated and actually don’t know any better. Long texts, devoid of any punctuation including capital letters and the mis-use of tenses make me want to scream. Their spoken word isn’t much better either.
Usually, I try to read to get the gist, then delete, often confused.
I’m guilty of over punctuating - love a hyphen!

Marydoll

As soon as I see a long unpunctuated post, without paragraphs, I don't read it. It hurts my eyes, trying to decipher it.
It is a pity, because it actually could be worth reading.

There was a poster on GN, who never used capital letters and as a fully paid up pedant, it seriously irritated me!

Are you sure that your use of commas is correct in your final sentence? 😉

Calendargirl

Regarding the use of commas, my old English teacher used to say “When in doubt, leave it out!”

That's a very good piece of advice.

As well as the posts with little or no punctuation, there are as many where commas are used when they shouldn't be.

I have noticed an increasing number of posts recently where people are putting a comma between subject and verb. For example: My sister and her husband, came to visit me.

Regarding the use of commas, my old English teacher used to say “When in doubt, leave it out!”

As soon as I see a long unpunctuated post, without paragraphs, I don't read it. It hurts my eyes, trying to decipher it.
It is a pity, because it actually could be worth reading.

There was a poster on GN, who never used capital letters and as a fully paid up pedant, it seriously irritated me!

I'm glad it's not just me.

In a previous life my work involved writing and checking copy for newspapers and magazines and years later on, marking exam papers in typing and word processing so my eye is very much drawn to errors.

It used to bother me but it doesn’t now because everyone sends texts full of abbreviations, emojis etc. I am fairly cool with it now but if I do receive any poorly written letters from professional people then I have to restrain myself! 🤣

I agree. It’s hard work.

When I see a huge wodge of text on here without paragraphs or much punctuation I just don't want to bother with it. I realise of course that sometimes people are distressed and anxious and want to get everything down but it does make things difficult.

I have a temperamental phone which regularly 'loses' the punctuation site. When I have to send a message, I simply do it without punctuation. Happily, none of the people I'm in communication with think I'm even remotely ignorant. Dearie me..........

I know someone who sometimes had difficulty in knowing when to use a full stop instead of a comma, which seems to be a common problem. I suggested thinking of them as a long breath and a short breath respectively in your sentence to help decide which it should be, and that seemed to help.

It happens on GN. I find it very annoying. Just a stream of words, devoid of punctuation - and we are supposed to make sense of it. Lazy and arrogant.

Of course speech is punctuated, by pauses, inflection, change in tone and people actually finishing what they need to say, provided they are not interrupted by others who won't let them complete their sentence.
Not using basic punctuation, even capital letters and full stops, is simply laziness, not ignorance.

I am partially sighted and get very irritated when in front of me is typing the length of a page of A4 with no paragraphs, never mind no punctuation. I do not bother to wade through it.

There's a big difference between 'Let's eat, Grandma' and 'Let's eat Grandma'!

There is, but with that particular example, we manage perfectly well without any punctuation, or even a pause, in speech. 😁

Oh I know what you mean. I'm an admin on various other groups too and there are some serial 'offenders' on there. One woman types out screeds and screeds at a time - not one bit of punctuation whatsoever. It makes for very hard reading. I can never work out if they don't know how to use punctuation or just can't be bothered.
And punctuation is important. There's a big difference between 'Let's eat, Grandma' and 'Let's eat Grandma'!