From: John Hudson (john@tiro.ca)
Date: Wed Dec 24 2008 - 12:58:57 CST
Joó Ádám wrote:
>> The syntactical form of English exclamations is usually identical to the
>> syntactical form of English questions, so the punctuation marks distinguish
>> and tell us how to read them.
> Exactly. Just as emoticons can distinguish and tell us how to read them.
Without the punctuation marks one cannot distinguish meaning between two
syntactically identical classes of utterance. I have yet to see any
emoticons that are essential to understanding text, which is not
surprising since they are not linked to grammatical structures in the
way that punctuation is.
JH
--
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Gulf Islands, BC tiro@tiro.com
At the sunset of our days on earth, at the moment of
death, we will be evaluated on the basis of our similarity
or otherwise with the Baby who is to be born in the poor
grotto of Bethlehem, since it is He who is the standard
of measurement which God has given to humanity.
-- Benedict XVI
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