Would someone inspect my colon?

humberklog

I'm hoping that someone here would be able to clear up a matter of punctuation.
On a thread over in After Hours concerning grammar, spelling and punctuation a sentence popped up. Now I must point out that the sentence was in jest by the poster but it is a tricky little one to correct. Well...it is for me:).

The original sentence reads- "No matter what you say Grammer, spellling and punctation is important."

Now obviously there's a lot wrong with it, but how would one go about correcting it?

I put forward- "No matter what you say: grammar, spelling and punctuation are important".

I would have thought that a colon was correct to use after the line "No matter what you say:". Am I wrong?

Yakuza

I would re-jig it a little bit:

"No matter what you say, the things that are important are: grammar, spelling and punctuation".

Alternatively, a simple comma instead of the comma makes it look better to me:

"No matter what you say, grammar, spelling and punctuation are important".

FlutterinBantam

Yakuza wrote: »

I would re-jig it a little bit:

"No matter what you say, the things that are important are: grammar, spelling and punctuation".

Alternatively, a simple comma instead of the comma makes it look better to me:

"No matter what you say, grammar, spelling and punctuation are important".

I feel that version doesn't give the emphasis I feel the poster wants to convey.
It's a little too mild for me. Depends, I would surmise, on the posters attitude to the argument.

I feel he wants the pause after the "No matter what you say"

I see a forefinger in the air in that statement which a comma for me doesn't do justice to.

We'll have to wait and hear from him perhaps.

humberklog

Indeed FB, that's exactly where I'm coming from. In my opening post I deliberately popped in a different example of approach to saying much the same thing but using a slightly different dynamic.
"On a thread over in After Hours concerning grammar, spelling...". This sentence doesn't require any punctuation between the words "concerning" and "grammar". It just naturally rolls along. It reads as it is spoken.

However the sentence given for discussion has a very different dynamic. The first five words ("No matter what you say") are a statement before a listing. When I approach saying the sentence in full there is a natural pause between the first five words and the rest of the sentence. This pause is slightly longer than the pause given in the rest of the sentence where a comma is sufficient (grammar, spelling and...).

As the pause where the colon is used is a longer pause than where the comma that follows is, this would lead me to think that the sentence requires a colon to differentiate and highlight the rhythmical pattern.
I've tried saying the line a few different ways and every time I still have a longer pause where the colon is. So I would assume that this should be reflected in the writing of the sentence to impart the correct dynamic to the reader and I'd consider the colon to work correctly in doing that job.

FlutterinBantam

Glad I interpreted the meaning somewhat correctly.

Lynn Truss in Eats Shoots and Leaves suggests that a count of

1 2 3 after a colon
1 2 after a semi and
1 after a comma as a rule of thumb to convey the emphasis the writer wants to give.

She is not too enamoured with the system, but i feel it is a fairly basic way of working out in your head which article of punctuation to use.


All depends on the forcefulness and belief of the person who says it.

humberklog

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

Glad I interpreted the meaning somewhat correctly.

Lynn Truss in Eats Shoots and Leaves

She is not too enamoured with the system, but i feel it is a fairly basic way of working out in your head which article of punctuation to use.

Glad you did too.

This system is the one that I would have grown up with. It's not fool proof but a pretty handy rule of thumb, which in turn lends itself well to something that can be as occasionally fuzzy as literary grammar.

Lynn Truss if I remember correctly didn't like this rule too much because I believe she took the writers terminology too strictly. The writer she quoted used the term "seconds" for each count. If I remember correctly she scoffed at the idea of someone counting up to three seconds for a full stop sized space and right she would be too. However I do think that the original writer she quoted intended to use the word "seconds" more figuratively, in that it's merely a space: a small space (he calls it a second but more than likely intended it to mean about a third of a second) building up to a full stop space or colon (about a second). A cleverness, by the original writer she quoted, to use the word "second" so it works as a general scale across the board. Because of peoples speech patterns, dialects and accents the pauses he talks of would vary from person to person and from region to region. The writer settles on the word "seconds" not literally but purely as a word to measure a pause and Lynn took it as the universally used measure of time.
It was clever tool that she didn't get a full handle on.

MathsManiac

I disagree (but not vociferously!) I believe a comma is the more appropriate here. The length of pause in the spoken sentence is not, in my view, a suitable way to determine the correct punctuation. Commas serve many different functions. Some of these correspond to longer pauses in the spoken words than others. The colon has certain specific uses, and I don't think this is one of them.

I believe that the introductory phrase here is no different from the following:
"However,..."
"In my view,..."
"Nonetheless,..."
"Despite all of your comments,..."

A colon is generally used when the portion of the sentence following it is an expansion or elaboration of what has preceded it. This is not the case in the above, and I don't believe it's the case in your example either. Nor can I see any other sound reason why a colon here would be justified.

humberklog

Yeah they're good points you make MM. I still like to see clear definition when reading though. You say that the comma's pause can vary and I fully agree but when two are used in the same sentence where there are two pauses of varying lengths and differing intentions I would have always plumped for differing punctuation marks. It just looks clearer to me.

Well spotted with the colon googly I lobbed into the last post. I agree it is wrongly used but I was just being mischievous:pac:.

MathsManiac

humberklog wrote: »

Well spotted with the colon googly I lobbed into the last post. I agree it is wrongly used but I was just being mischievous:pac:.

When I said "...in the above...", I was referring to the examples I had given immediately above, by the way. I didn't intend to criticise the text of your post. (One discussion about colons at a time suffices!)

FlutterinBantam

The rule of thumb is that the sentence before the colon is the "menu" for the meal which follows..ie, some connection there.

These are generalisations ,I feel, and not set in stone. Subject to debate I would say but beyond me regretfully.