Posts Tagged ‘punctuation’
Punctuation botheration (2)
It seems Birmingham isn’t the only city having bother with place name apostrophes, as shown by the Londonist website’s post on Should King’s Cross Have An Apostrophe?. Unlike Birmingham City Council, however, the various London authorities haven’t reached a unanimous decision. The simple truth is that there is no ‘official’ stance on the name. Or, […]
Filed under: English, Writing | 2 Comments
Tags: apostrophes, English, King's Cross, London, punctuation, Writing
It seems that Italy too has got problems with spelling and punctuation, though in this case at graffiti rather than local authority level. The text in black above should read “L’orgoglio non serve”. Roughly translated, “Pride doesn’t serve any purpose”, to which an Italian Lynne Truss has responded “But apostrophes do”. This picture is from a […]
Filed under: Italian, Language | 2 Comments
Tags: graffiti, grammar, Italian, Language, punctuation, Spelling
I wrote on 21 July about quote-marks — how to decide whether you should be using curly (smart) or straight quotes and, once you’ve decided, how to type them using keyboard shortcuts where necessary. Translators, however, need to decide not just which quote marks to use but whether or not to “translate” them. For example, […]
Filed under: Language, Quality, Translation, Writing | 6 Comments
Tags: angle quotes, guillemets, Language, punctuation, quality, quote marks, Translation, Writing
Keyboard shortcuts are a great timesaver when you’re spending hours typing away on your computer. I’ve just learned a couple of new ones, for inserting smart (curly) quotes in text where autoformat functions, such as Word’s, don’t work, and for doing the opposite: inserting straight quotes when you’re working in AutoFormat mode. I discovered these tips […]
Filed under: Language, Writing | 5 Comments
Tags: keyboard shortcuts, Language, prime marks, punctuation, quote marks, typography, Writing
Words to good effect 