[HPFGU-OTChatter] Apostrophes and quotes (was Info for FF moderators and writers.)

[Dina Lerret]

davewitley said:

> Personally, I would be quite happy to see the end of the apostrophe,
> as it performs no useful function in writing.  We know that must be

Hm, I'm a bit reluctant to abandon the apostrophe, even if we're talking
about outside grammar usage in contractions.

I tend to limit quotations--I only think of them as the paired/double
marks--to referencing conversation or direct quoting.  My habit of
apostrophes... is almost as bad as my usage of ellipses for pauses in
thought. {g}  And yes, I know the proper format is for the beginning to
have three periods with the trailing having four periods.

Um, I use apostrophes to emphasize words when I don't think they need as
much emphasis as asterisks would imply--all uppercase is reserved for
shouting and/or acronyms.  It's like minor inflections in saying the
words.  Another usage is like I'm *sort of* doing those 'bunny gestures'
with my first two fingers to signify double quotes.  Another usage is when
I don't have a direct quote and I'm estimating on a phrase... I have no
idea what I'm doing. {g}  I believe the proper usage is inside double
quotes to signal the speaker quoting someone else.

As for why my emoticons--when I don't use the smiley format--have the
curvy brackets versus the sharply angled, some webmail and software and
website scripts have this tendency of wiping out anything that doesn't
resemble proper HTML.  So, I began using them to imply action.

> so, because we can understand speech, and nobody ever pronounced an
> apostrophe.

Yes, but then you're possibly bringing up the study of how some folks can
understand words with missing letters: if u cn undrstnd ths, u cn b a
prgrmr.

Just when you thought netspeak was annoying. ;-)

Dina