From: Guy Steele (Guy.Steele@Sun.COM)
Date: Fri Jan 20 2006 - 13:51:56 CST
On Jan 20, 2006, at 2:33 PM, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> Whooey, such a lot of dots...! Who woulda thunk it?!
>
>
>> The Chicago Manual mandates that in such situations, ...
>>
>
> The Chicago Manual of Style would love to be able to mandate
> in such situations, ...
>
> Fortunately, users of the English language have traditionally
> resisted such stuffiness, and the poets of the language strive
> on.
Allow me, then, to represent
That it was never my intent
You should be all unwilling bent
Beneath Chicago's yoke,
But merely to explain the rules
It lays forth, as prospective tools
For understanding: only fools
Believe whatever's spoke.
[And note that here I claim not to be a poet, but only a
versifier . . .]
Chicago, like the Unicode Consortium, speaks, and speaks fairly clearly;
and you may choose to listen, or not. (Chicago, at least, does not box
itself into a corner by guaranteeing to cast ALL mistakes of a certain
form into concrete for all time.) The big advantage of Chicago is that
whenever a question or dispute arises, you can usually just say
"Chicago"
and make a decision. The result will probably be crisp, standardized,
institutional, and boring---which allows you to focus your creative
energy on other issues if that's what you want.
As always, you can choose to ignore certain "rules" of communication,
at the expense of sacrificing the ability to rely on them as a source
of common understanding.
As always, to choose you can ignoring da talklike "rules" what am,
can you then rest not pairwiselike, bothknow you think . . . you think?
--Guy Steele
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