RIP

Film

First objection: These "RIP" alerts are always gut-wrenching. So when they're being offered for dead and dying formats (can we get a belated RIP for Betamax? No?) they're rather mildly obnoxious. I suppose it's nice that a human being isn't actually dead. That's the only silver lining here. So I guess a "thank you" is in order? Thanks.

Second objection: The sloppy grammar of the article. Observe:

Quote

Many of the nation's remaining mail-order company that processing film from still cameras has closed, even though stills are having a resurgence in serious market.

Seriously? Many company has closed? Stills are having a resurgence in serious market?

RIP - Gooder grammar.

...

Oh. Umm. No format is an island, I suppose. RIP film.

Yeah, sorry Kay. I didnt want to cause any panic with RIP subject line. I actually find the whole RIP thing pretty obnoxious too, but gave up and just accepted it.

It may not be the most well-written blog entry in history, but I found the subject matter profound enough and worthy of some nostalgiac reflection.

Ebert is actually my favorite critic of all time in any genre. I dont think there is anyone even remotely comparable in the music arena. I continue to trust his reviews and read them eagerly each week, 40 something years after he started writing them.

I'm sure this article has been the source of many an argument:

[www.slate.com]

I'm a middle-of-the-road kinda guy: I am a big fan of the serial comma, but I have indeed succumbed to the movement toward a single space after a sentence.

Depending on the context, I also sometimes resist putting a comma or period inside of quotation marks. For instance, I would say "this is a really stupid sentence." But it doesn't seem right to do it that way when it's something like:

I don't know what to do with this here "dipsy-doodle".

Don't try to bring logic into American grammar!

For formal writing, I always place the punctuation inside the quotation marks. But for more informal writing, if I'm trying to make a point similar to your example, I'll put the punctuation outside the quotes. That seems to be more clear in some cases.

Does the punctuation mark really go inside the quotation marks at the end of a "sentence?" This seems totally wrong to the eye. I think I had a few college teachers ding me on that, but I rejected their dictates. Hell, Faulkner and James Joyce didnt accept modern English punctuation at all. I side with them.

p.s. Also heard Jane Austen sucked at grammar and punctuation and was thoroughly cleaned up by an editor/publisher. Found that really interesting.

I wish these tweeters and bloggers and Facebookers would keep the tradition of having two spaces after and before a sentence. I look and see that it is not so; even in magazines it's just one space with everything jammed together. The two-space rule makes everything easier to read.

Really? I find it exactly the opposite. I find two spaces distracting - it gives the sentences a pause that makes them read clunky, at least in my head.

Yes, but I think sentences need room to breathe. HEEEE-HOOOO (taking a breath.)

hoip chiggs wrote:

> I wish these tweeters and bloggers and Facebookers would keep
> the tradition of having two spaces after and before a sentence.
> I look and see that it is not so; even in magazines it's just
> one space with everything jammed together. The two-space rule
> makes everything easier to read.

Don't blame the "bloggers and tweeters and Facebookers"...blame the techies who define how the "World Wide Web" works. Web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. automatically ignore extra spaces (called "runs of white space") anywhere in text including at the end of a sentence. It's not the browser's fault as that's how the agreed upon HTML specifications say they should behave. There are ways to force the browsers to display fixed spacing using special character codes but most web coders try to avoid them as they can mess with line breaks, screw up justified text and even result in weird spaces in the middle of sentences.

He who writes the code makes the rules. Deal with it.

Ampersand N B S P Semicolon is your friend!

Working as a typesetter in print shops, I learned that putting two spaces between sentences is more of a typing tradition than a typesetting/printing one.

I ALWAYS use 2 spaces after a period and refuse to change, even though the historical arguments are compelling. I also always use the Oxford comma.

And people who take a perfectly ordinary noun like "money" and turn it into a verb.

For example, "Where do you money at?"

I just wanna punch 'em.



Post Edited (11-08-11 10:47)

Or a perfectly ordinary verb like "fail" and use it as a noun.