From nicholas@uci.edu Sun Jul 08 02:21:55 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 8 Jul 2001 09:21:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 60094 invoked from network); 8 Jul 2001 09:21:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 8 Jul 2001 09:21:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta2 with SMTP; 8 Jul 2001 09:21:54 -0000 Received: from [128.195.186.202] (dialin53a-94.ppp.uci.edu [128.195.186.104]) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id CAA22207 for ; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 02:21:53 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 02:08:54 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: optional punctuation From: Nick Nicholas You will have noticed that the Lojban-language preface of the lessons uses optional punctuation, including ! and ; . I myself think optional punctuation is a good and wondrous thing, because I find slabs of lowercase Lojban with no punctuation and capitalisation indigestible. (I am very much aware that punctuation and capitalisation are Western-only conventions; then again, so is learning to read Latin script.) To me, the preface is not part of the paedagogy of the lessons; there's usage in there, after all, that's not covered in the lessons. Nonetheless, it has been pointed out to me that there is conflict between using optional punctuation in the preface, and saying that punctuation is not necessary in Lesson 1. I don't think there is such conflict ("not necessary" != "banned", "thousand flowers bloom", yadda yadda); but what do you think? Harmful eccentricity, or needless confusion? If there's enough consensus, I'll kill them. (Kicking and screaming, admittedly.) Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. nicholas@uci.edu www.opoudjis.net "Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.