I sure wish people would use punctuation

[Alpo]

I placed an order with Amazon. Supposed to arrive Monday the 3rd. Just got an email telling me that it would be here Friday the 31st. Wonderful.

 

Email said NOW ARRIVING EARLY ON THE 31ST.

 

"Arriving early on the 31st" means arriving at 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. "Arriving early COMMA on the 31st" means that it will be arriving sooner than was originally scheduled.

 

That's the reason they invented punctuation - so you can understand what people are saying. So you don't have to guess.

[Crazy Gun Barney, SASS #2428]

[Pat Riot]

4 minutes ago, Alpo said:

I placed an order with Amazon. Supposed to arrive Monday the 3rd. Just got an email telling me that it would be here Friday the 31st. Wonderful.

 

Email said NOW ARRIVING EARLY ON THE 31ST.

 

"Arriving early on the 31st" means arriving at 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. "Arriving early COMMA on the 31st" means that it will be arriving sooner than was originally scheduled.

 

That's the reason they invented punctuation - so you can understand what people are saying. So you don't have to guess.

You have touched on a real stickler for me as well. I have a couple of guys at work, one being a supervisor, that just will not use punctuation properly. The supervisor that works for me would laugh about it. Then one day I sent an email on his behalf to payroll regarding a problem with some missing pay. Because of the way I wrote it it caused more confusion and not only did he not get the missing money he was due they removed some straight time overtime that they had already paid him for on his next check. 
 

It was quite priceless to learn that he was miffed “…because if Tom would have written his request better I wouldn’t have gotten screwed on my pay!”

I overheard him complaining about my handling of his issue from the hallway. 
I stepped into the office and my exact words to him were “Hey dipstick, punctuation is important after all, isn’t it?”

I then took him into my office and rewrote my initial email with correct punctuation and let him read it. I then told him that the next time he laughs or jokes about my complaining about his poor writing skills that I will find a way to really jack him up with my ability to also write like a jackass. 
 

He got the point. 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

What’s the point?

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

.

 

[Doc Shapiro]

Use the Oxford Comma too.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

1 minute ago, Doc Shapiro said:

Use the Oxford Comma too.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html

 

 ..... well, that was short-lived ........... I, apparently have reached the limit of my "freebee" access ........   

[Father Kit Cool Gun Garth]

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

7 minutes ago, Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 said:

 

 ..... well, that was short-lived ........... I, apparently have reached the limit of my "freebee" access ........   

So have I, even though I never visited this site before.

[Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967]

Here ya go:

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/think-commas-don-t-matter-omitting-one-cost-maine-dairy-n847151

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

Thank You 

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

6 hours ago, Doc Shapiro said:

Use the Oxford Comma too.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html

Oh pard, you hit one of my pet peeves.  I am an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma.  It adds clarity.  When I worked in the Pentagon, the entire Army staff received a memo stating the then-Army Chief of Staff (GEN George Casey) didn't like the Oxford comma and we were to cease using it altogether.

[Doc Shapiro]

4 minutes ago, Cyrus Cassidy #45437 said:

Oh pard, you hit one of my pet peeves.  I am an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma.  It adds clarity.  When I worked in the Pentagon, the entire Army staff received a memo stating the then-Army Chief of Staff (GEN George Casey) didn't like the Oxford comma and we were to cease using it altogether.

Thems fightin words there. The Oxford comma should be a must

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

Adding on, I'd like to introduce more than a few posters on SASS forums to the return key (formerly called the carriage return on typewriters). Fewer things are more irritating than a screen full of text in a single paragraph.

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

The Lady Gaga example in this explanation of the Oxford Comma is hilarious!

 

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/what-is-the-oxford-comma-and-why-do-people-care-so-much-about-it/

[Dusty Devil Dale]

12 hours ago, Alpo said:

That's the reason they invented punctuation - so you can understand what people are saying. So you don't have to guess.

Saying what you mean properly is important, if you want to get back useful responses.  

 

There's an old story about a man who was preparing to wallpaper his dining room.  He asked his neighbor with an identical floor plan how many rolls of wallpaper he had bought when he recently did his dining room.  The neighbor replied, "42 rolls".  The man ran into the neighbor after finishing his wallpaper job.  He said, "I did exactly what you said and bought 42 rolls of paper, but I ended up with 26 rolls left over".  The neighbor replied, "Yeah, so did I".  

[LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L]

I correct and approve the reports filed by members of my Police Department.  There is an occasional bright spot, but it's mostly run on sentences.  I actually broke one sentence into five separate sentences, and two paragraphs in a recently filed report.  No punctuation was used other than a period at the end.  

 

I won't even start on the Officer who actually used "u r" in place of "you are" in an official police report.  

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

11 hours ago, Cyrus Cassidy #45437 said:

Oh pard, you hit one of my pet peeves.  I am an ardent supporter of the Oxford comma.  It adds clarity.  When I worked in the Pentagon, the entire Army staff received a memo stating the then-Army Chief of Staff (GEN George Casey) didn't like the Oxford comma and we were to cease using it altogether.

Could be the cause of some contract cost overruns.

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

1 hour ago, LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L said:

I correct and approve the reports filed by members of my Police Department.  There is an occasional bright spot, but it's mostly run on sentences.  I actually broke one sentence into five separate sentences, and two paragraphs in a recently filed report.  No punctuation was used other than a period at the end.  

 

I won't even start on the Officer who actually used "u r" in place of "you are" in an official police report.  

I saw the same when I was in LE.  You have to understand, I don't fit the mold of a typical cop.  I'm way more educated than any of my peers were, and even my undergraduate degree in history made me a better writer than other cops with degrees (criminal justice is *NOT* nearly as writing-intensive as history; I think only English majors could rival that).  So some of the reports my peers wrote were pretty terrible. 

I had one sergeant who was a blithering idiot and functionally illiterate.  The problem was, he *thought* he was both intelligent and well-educated.  He used to reject reports from me when he was too illiterate to follow, and I DID NOT use five dollar words to make myself sound intelligent.  I just wrote plainly, with correctly constructed sentences and paragraphs.  But this guy wouldn't know the meaning of a word -- a plain, simple word -- and reject the report and demand I change the word.  I swear, the extent of his communication abilities was to point at things and grunt. 

 

One time I used "veracity" just to make him mad.  He could have gone to www.dictionary.com and looked it up, but he rejected the report and chewed me out for five minutes instead.  He asked me what it meant, and I told him, "truthfulness."  His response was astounding even for him:  "I looked it up and that's not what it means."

How about you paint "I'M NOT ONLY ILLITERATE, BUT I JUST LIED TO YOU ABOUT LOOKING IT UP" your forehead, Sergeant???  After that, learn to read.  And then resign because liars have no business in police work. 

 

The same guy would publicly call out a fellow sergeant of his, making fun of him for the way in which he wrote a "topic of the day" that was to be read aloud at the shift briefing.  The only problem is, the guy who wrote it was right, and the idiot was exposing his own ignorance by making fun of one of his colleagues. 

 

Yes, he was terrible to work for, and I got stuck with him for the three worst years of my life.  I volunteered for the Reserves to send me to Afghanistan to get away from this prick.  I saw combat as a break.

[LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L]

17 minutes ago, Cyrus Cassidy #45437 said:

I saw the same when I was in LE.  You have to understand, I don't fit the mold of a typical cop.  I'm way more educated than any of my peers were, and even my undergraduate degree in history made me a better writer than other cops with degrees (criminal justice is *NOT* nearly as writing-intensive as history; I think only English majors could rival that).  So some of the reports my peers wrote were pretty terrible. 

I had one sergeant who was a blithering idiot and functionally illiterate.  The problem was, he *thought* he was both intelligent and well-educated.  He used to reject reports from me when he was too illiterate to follow, and I DID NOT use five dollar words to make myself sound intelligent.  I just wrote plainly, with correctly constructed sentences and paragraphs.  But this guy wouldn't know the meaning of a word -- a plain, simple word -- and reject the report and demand I change the word.  I swear, the extent of his communication abilities was to point at things and grunt. 

 

One time I used "veracity" just to make him mad.  He could have gone to www.dictionary.com and looked it up, but he rejected the report and chewed me out for five minutes instead.  He asked me what it meant, and I told him, "truthfulness."  His response was astounding even for him:  "I looked it up and that's not what it means."

How about you paint "I'M NOT ONLY ILLITERATE, BUT I JUST LIED TO YOU ABOUT LOOKING IT UP" your forehead, Sergeant???  After that, learn to read.  And then resign because liars have no business in police work. 

 

The same guy would publicly call out a fellow sergeant of his, making fun of him for the way in which he wrote a "topic of the day" that was to be read aloud at the shift briefing.  The only problem is, the guy who wrote it was right, and the idiot was exposing his own ignorance by making fun of one of his colleagues. 

 

Yes, he was terrible to work for, and I got stuck with him for the three worst years of my life.  I volunteered for the Reserves to send me to Afghanistan to get away from this prick.  I saw combat as a break.

I had a Chief take me to task for the word "complainant" in a report, until I showed him the same word, same spelling, printed on the report by the State of Alabama.  In his mind, it should have had a second "t" in it, as "complaintant".  To this day, I have no idea where he came up with that mangled spelling.

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

6 minutes ago, LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L said:

I had a Chief take me to task for the word "complainant" in a report, until I showed him the same word, same spelling, printed on the report by the State of Alabama.  In his mind, it should have had a second "t" in it, as "complaintant".  To this day, I have no idea where he came up with that mangled spelling.

This was probably before spell check...but few people know how to use that correctly, either.  "There," "their," and "they're" are all spelled correctly, but you have to know how to use them.  In any case, your Chief probably believed "complaint" is the root word, so "complaintant" must be the one filing the complaint.  Of course, even pre-spell check there was such a thing as a dictionary!  Laziness.

[Okie Sawbones, SASS #77381]

I was walking past a farm and a sign said:

"Duck, Eggs"

I thought: That's an unnecessary comma - and then it hit me."

[Pat Riot]

Something just dawned on me as I scrolled through The Saloon. Does anyone else see it? 
 

I sure wish people would use punctuation

[Alpo]

What? The missing period? I blame otto.

 

Even if it was my mistake, I would still blame otto.

[Alpo]

He's the one that changed my grammatically correct "surely" to the sloppy incorrect "sure", also.

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

 

[Seamus McGillicuddy]

The Oxford comma violates a cardinal rule of comma use I learned in grammar school: When in doubt, leave it out. 
 

Seamus

[DeaconKC]

8 hours ago, LawMan Mark, SASS #57095L said:

I won't even start on the Officer who actually used "u r" in place of "you are" in an official police report.  

That was a really good way to get called into your Supervisor's office in Illinois Department of Corrections and chewed out or written up, as these reports could [and often did] wind up in Court.

[H. K. Uriah, SASS #74619]

Should I point out that the title of this thread has no period at the end of its sentance?

[Pat Riot]

19 minutes ago, H. K. Uriah, SASS #74619 said:

Should I point out that the title of this thread has no period at the end of its sentance?

Yes, yes indeed. 

[Kid Rich]

1 hour ago, H. K. Uriah, SASS #74619 said:

Should I point out that the title of this thread has no period at the end of its sentance?

At the end of its whaaat?

kR

[Alpo]

2 hours ago, H. K. Uriah, SASS #74619 said:

Should I point out that the title of this thread has no period at the end of its sentance?

Should I point out that if you had read the entirety of this thread before deciding to post, you would have seen that that has already been discussed.

[Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062]

10 minutes ago, Alpo said:

Should I point out that if you had read the entirety of this thread before deciding to post, you would have seen that that has already been discussed.

 

 

 ...... what about speeling misteaks  ... ?   

[Abilene Slim SASS 81783]

2 hours ago, Kid Rich said:

At the end of its whaaat?

kR

He misspelled it.  Supposed be centents. 

[Alpo]

And to dig once more into ending punctuation on a title - if the title is a question:

Why don't people use punctuation?

Or a forceful statement:

People need to use punctuation, dammit!

There is normally punctuation at the end of the title. But if the title would just qualify as a sentence --- I don't recall ever seeing a period used in a title.