A theory that I'm too lazy to check is that many European nations use single quotes for actual quotes and double quotes for emphasis. The Italian barber who's cut my hair ever since I was born (almost literally) has signs all over his shop that are handmade that say things like this:


He's been in-a the U.S. for at least-a thirty years and still talks like he's-a from the old country.



While I'm here, and also lazy, what the hell is this thing:


I don't know what it is, I don't know what it's used for, and I don't know why it's on my keyboard instead of potentially more valuable characters like ¢ or º.

Alot of people think it's.

Bitwise OR.

Meh. The question mark add's an inflection to the sentence. All though not grammatically correct, useful when trying to emulate tone of voice.

Sounds like this book is right up your alley

Why are these no stickies thread?

Oh and why is no constant misuse of than and then mentioned yet? This tilts me kinda hard and I am not even native speaker...

Here here!

(j/k, I know it's "hear hear." I just wanted to add yet another common mistake)

My grandpa would always give birthday cards that said on the cover...

to "Greg"

i vaguely remember a friend telling me that he saw a negative article about "eats, shoots and leaves." whoever wrote it tore the book apart for its myriad errors in grammar.

if anyone knows where to find this, i would appreciate a link. looking down on people who purport to be experts is a passion of mine.

edit: found it. <3 the new yorker and <3 louis menand
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...628crbo_books1

"Noone" usually receives this response from me:



Penny arcade has a couple great punctuation bits:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/20...f-punctuation/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/11/03/

Does anyone else text with proper grammar? I use apostrophes and everything when texting, it just kills me to send the word "I'll" without it, as it just looks like "lll" on the phone.

Nested parentheses (note correct pluralization (also, punctuation goes after the close parenthesis))?

The one thing I never worry about is ending a sentence with a preposition, unless I'm being a jackass. I have yet to hear an explanation that makes any real sense to me.

Also, how about putting punctuation inside quotes? I see that screwed pretty often.

"Like this?"

"Yes," I replied.

I feel like this thread was made for me. Unfortunately I have nothing to contribute at this time since "noone" and the overuse of question marks has been covered.

The people that drive me insane at work are the ones that can speak normally but send emails to the department that look like this:

printer by the conference room broken again somebody call help desk or should i

I can't take that ****. It's like they flip the stupid switch on their brains only for times when typing is required.

I'm always surprised at how many people think "heighth" is a word. They say it more often then they write it.

I see what you did there. Hope I'm not the only one.