Style.
And punctuation does not need to agree with some style guide somewhere in the universe?
This is what is tough to take. How can there be no right or wrong on something like this? These abbreviations pretty much exist for written language so there are conventions about how they are used. Why would you use them in written language and then just plop them down there phonetically? You take the time to spell other words correctly, and punctuate your sentences; why stop at punctuating these expressions according to convention?
I guess it’s like sins – I need to just worry about my own and not judge others’.
Right. The meaning is clear and the usage is common. Thus it’s perfectly OK. *There are no rules for American English.
*
(unless your employer requires a certain style guide)
But there has to be the spirit of a rule – you’ve said the meaning needs to be clear. Therefore, there are rules, like use a question mark at the end of a question. If there isn’t a rule about e.g. and i.e., how did they know what to teach me in school? Was that a suggestion? A convention?
More like guidelines- like the Pirate Code.
The usage must lend itself to understanding and be fairly common.
But honestly, commas after “e.g.”? :rolleyes:
More precisely, there are several rights and a lot more wrongs. And some of those rights are righter than others, and some of the wrongs are wronger than others. But none is universally the Platonic Right.
If we think of the hierarchy of writing it might go something like this: [ul][li]First we have letters. We have to (mostly) agree on what any shape of ink squiggle means in order to communicate accurately. []Then we have spelling. We have to (mostly) agree on what sequence of letters forms any given word in order to communicate accurately. []Then we have grammar. We have to (mostly) agree on what any sequence of words means in order to communicate accurately. [*]Then we have literary style. We have to (mostly) agree on the nuances of what various prose style mean in order to communicate accurately.[/ul][/li]
I’d vote to put punctuation either inside the spelling level as just another meaning chunk, or to place it at the grammar level as an adjunct to word relationships. Or maybe in between as a discrete layer of its own. But experts disagree even on that.
At each level there is room for differing authorities to prefer different standards. Whether that authority is the esteemed but archaic Strunk & White, or the OED, or AP, or plain 'ol you or me.
The more your and my standards agree, the more likely it is you and I will communicate accurately. But some guy who’s an ESL learner from halfway across the planet may well be working from different standards at all 4 levels. So he following his standards perfectly will look wrong to you in terms of yours. And vice versa. But you’ll probably still communicate at least decently.
Yes, there absolutely is an upper limit to how loosey-goosey the whole thing can get before many-to-many communication, such as we have here on SDMB, falls completely apart. But that doesn’t mean the only safe choice is the polar opposite: absolute standardization at all levels.
Absolute standardization of prose style would strictly prohibit poetry, lyrics, and most humor. As well as oratory, academic writing, and sportswriting. I’m sure you don’t really favor that.
Absolute standardization of grammar would prohibit all but one of British English, American English, and African American Vernacular English. As well as lots of regional dialects within each of those, plus many more elsewhere. I’m sure you don’t really favor that either.
Absolute standardization of spelling would also be hard on British - US relations.
And surely you don’t hate fonts so much as to desire there be only one in the whole world?
Language is not a scalpel slicing crisply through crystalline concepts. It’s more a trowel heaping variegated mud more or less where you want it to go. It’s an imprecise tool for transferring the gist of ideas from the context of one person’s experience to other(s)’ experience context(s).
Consistency certainly helps. It reduces the variation in the mud and the “grain” of your trowel strokes.
And the whole thing is under no-one’s control and is changing every day. Books written in the 1950s are almost unreadably archaic today. And that’s the stuff I grew up reading. Stuff from 1910 is even worse.
tldr: But don’t fool yourself there is *a *right way. There are merely righter ways and less-right ways. And multiple legitimate competing claims for most-right way. Content yourself with staying in range of the bright light of a consistent style, and hope others do too. You hunt for nuggets of wisdom under your streetlamp and the rest of us will likewise hunt under ours.
A convention, I suppose. Or most likely, just how the teachers preferred to write.
A question without a mark at the end could cause a moment of confusion because the reader initially interprets it as a statement and must re-adjust when they realize it’s a question. No such readjustment is involved with the comma after i.e. or e.g. Now this is just my opinion but I think it’s pretty accurate.
It’s just that you write as though there were stone tablets of The So Many Commandments of Writing and going against them is in and of itself wrong rather than being wrong for a specific reason. I don’t count clarity because that often is just sort of tossed out as a buzzword. “Writing should be clear.” “What do you mean by clear?” “Just, you know, clear.”
This is one of the best posts on the subject I have had the privilege of reading!
They teach “rules” because it is easier. Nobody knows all the nuances of a language. I mean that literally. No one. Language is far too complex. An actual grammar of English is a tome of a thousand pages of arguing, trying to fit sometimes contradictory examples into a template. No child could grasp that.
There are rules of grammar, assuming that one understands that grammar applies to the structuring of language in ways that a native speaker would find normal. Those are not instinctive: think of a toddler saying the analogous “I goed to the store” instead of the irregular “I went to the store.” Languages are often illogical. Attempting to apply strict logic to the irregularity of language is a disease that was prevalent in the 19th century and left its grubby paws all over teaching in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Spelling in next in the hierarchy. Most words have one agreed-upon spelling; some have two, a very few have more. But British spelling and American spelling differ in thousands of examples. Neither is more right than the other; merely that one is preferred in context.
Style is a matter of workplace regulations. Each workplace is free to make up its own. They are rules only in an extended, attenuated sense of the word.
Usage is the loosest of the four. At one time even sensible people thought that usage could be decreed and that all good writers - the term I use generally for working professionals - would accept that universal decree. The American Heritage people wanted to put out a prescriptive dictionary to counter the descriptive Webster’s Third and asked 200 big name good writers to comment on questions of usage. They were astounded to find out that every one had a completely different list of what was acceptable, and were adamant on their preferences. Prescriptivism died there and then.
Zombie prescriptivists have hurled imprecations upon descriptivists ever since, but they keep losing the battles. Usage is what good writers do, but good writer disagree among themselves. There is no higher authority to go to. I shouldn’t have to say this, but good writers do NOT think that anything goes. They care about the language. They differ from prescriptivists in understanding how language works, how it changes, and when to apply change and when not.
The vast majority of users of language are not good writers, nor do they need to be. They may or may not remember what their teachers said, but since no two teachers agree with one another, that’s an irrelevance. Giving guidance as to what would not offend the delicate sensibilities of what I call the ignorant pedants and calling it “rules” is a useful shortcut, no different than looking up the keyboard shortcut for “delete to the end of the sentence.” Only people in conversations about language need to keep in mind that the “rules” are no such thing.
This was written before all those other posts appeared. We all seem to be taking a similar stance.
I would like to add that if you choose to use a certain style, that is one thing. If you ignore convention from ignorance, that is entirely another.
I think that we all use several ‘styles’ - Our thesis (if we did one) would have been in the style laid down by the university. Our résumés will possibly be in another, less strictured style. Then on down through posts on a serious forum, letters or emails home and all the way down to tweets.
The important thing is that if we are educated, we can choose to ignore convention - if we are not, then our writing will betray us. Putting a comma after a full stop seems pedantic to me, but I would never criticize anyone for doing it.
I appreciate all the education here! Thanks for taking the time to lay it out for me.
Would you put a comma after “for example”?
All of language, every single bit of it, comes from usage and usage only.
And where does usage come from? People repeat what they hear and they make shit up.
Usage is the totality of language - usage is where dictionary definitions come from, usage is where grammar comes from, usage is where style guides come from… the only thing that exists is usage.
Usage leads; language “rules” tag along afterwards.
Presciptivists need rules, but language doesn’t… and therein lies the rub.
Wrong. Both choices are acceptable.
Phi Beta Kappa English Lit major here (i.e. I can tell the difference between a useful feature and a redundant, expendable regional peculiarity).
As long as you were making a choice – you know the convention is a comma and you choose to leave it out. I doubt others are being as thoughful about it. And what makes you leave the periods in?
Ah, the “singular they”. 
Heh – and it was supposed to be “they’re” – but, hey, you knew what I meant, right?!
Though it is often known as the ‘singular they’, you actually used it twice. Once in the parenthetical but also just before it, in “it tells me something about them” rather than the historical “it tells me something about him”.
Three times, but who’s counting?
I don’t use the singular they much, at least not in written form, but I think it’s A-OK.