# Punctuation rules have changed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 10, 2007, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614 "2007-02-10T13:51:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/21 "2007-02-10T21:19:36Z")
When I compose emails on my BlackBerry, if I hit the spacebar twice, I get a period! Now if I can only shrink my fingers down to the size of an infant. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/22 "2007-02-10T22:57:51Z")
[QUOTE=BobT] Now if I can only shrink my fingers down to the size of an infant. [/QUOTE] Observe a place where grammar and punctuation are important. No wonder Bob has problems typing, if his fingers are larger than an infant – it’s amazing he can manipulate a normal keyboard, much less a Blackberry! Now, if he had closed out that sentence with “…an infant\*\*'s\*\*,” I would have no grounds to turn him into an object lesson! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![robcaro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@robcaro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robcaro)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/23 "2007-02-11T00:32:11Z")
I have always used one space after the end of a sentence. There is no other way. Why would anyone want to put two spaces between one sentence and the next. I am not young either. I am now 77 years old. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/24 "2007-02-11T00:38:07Z")
[QUOTE=robcaro] I have always used one space after the end of a sentence. There is no other way. Why would anyone want to put two spaces between one sentence and the next. I am not young either. I am now 77 years old. [/QUOTE] I always understood that you did that because, well, it was the end of the sentence. Kinda like putting an indent at the beginning of the paragraph. you’d think the extra blank line would signal the start of the new paragraph, but that indent just… yaknow, makes it official. I dunno, I learned it at an early age (well, I was 15), and it stuck. You want to know what’s fun, is figuring out whether to use CE or AD when putting down dates. I prefer CE, but in my head, it means “Christian Era” rather than “Common Era” because, well, Common Era doesn’t make any sense in the context it gets used in. And AD just doesn’t make any sense. Does anyone even know what it’s an acronym for?! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/25 "2007-02-11T00:59:02Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] Does anyone even know what it’s an acronym for?! 😃 [/QUOTE] I do. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/26 "2007-02-11T01:01:48Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] And AD just doesn’t make any sense. Does anyone even know what it’s an acronym for?! 😃 [/QUOTE] Year of Our Lord, ano domini. (sp?) ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/27 "2007-02-11T01:05:55Z")
[QUOTE=garygnu] I do. [/QUOTE] Oh, well, OK then. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/28 "2007-02-11T01:22:27Z")
[QUOTE=Balthisar] Year of Our Lord, ano domini. (sp?) [/QUOTE] _Anno domini_, “in the year of the Lord” ("_Our_ Lord, i.e., Jesus, is understood, but not a part of the actual abbreviated phrase.) _Anno_, ablative or dative of _annus_, year (I’ve always understood it to be ablative, but heard from an unreliable source that it’s one of those idiomatic Latin dative usages that you learn individually or not at all.) plus _domini_, genitive of _dominus_, Lord. “Common Era” means, fairly simply, that it’s the international standard, regardless of religious belief or lack thereof, for dating purposes, which happens to be based on Dionysius Exiguus’s miscalculation of Jesus’s birthdate but has achieved total independence of that error. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/29 "2007-02-11T01:33:36Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] Serial comma (“bacon, lettuce[,] and tomato”): Still in hot debate, but with the following consensus evolving: If writing for an editor or a teacher, follow his/her style rules. If writing for a publication, follow its preferred style manual. Otherwise, use one style consistently, and prefer usage of the serial comma for the sake of its occasional need for clarity’s sake. In general, eschew it in journalism; use it otherwise. [/QUOTE] This is exactly what I was going to bring up, Poly. One of my better pals, partner in one of my businesses and now a Senior Editor in the Post Group, does this differently that my method. It drove us nuts for a while as we’d have to edit each others work. Note: We went to the same college. We both took Bonehead English (English 101) in our freshman year. We both used the same handbook. But he’s five years younger than I am. And he has a different version of the handbook…_one published five years later than mine_. My copy states that proper usage is “let’s get some lettuce, peppers, and celery.” His states that proper usage is 'let’s get some lettuce, peppers and celery." See that missing comma in his? Somewhere in that five year period the handbook from which we were both taught changed that rule. We still joke about that. ---
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/30 "2007-02-11T16:58:51Z")
[QUOTE=KlondikeGeoff] Let it never be said that 18-year-olds are not smart. **Captain** , you nailed it. I learned to type on a manual typewriter 100 years or so ago, and when I started using computers, it took me a long time to break myself of the habit of just hitting the space bar twice at the end of a sentence. [/QUOTE] Regardless, the older method is easier on the reader. And, it will take forever to die out. ---
**Author:** ![Jinx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/31 "2007-02-11T17:04:51Z")
[QUOTE=freckafree] I’m giving a presentation about writing Monday night to a group of administrative assistant types. When I asked the person who invited me to speak what kinds of things I should talk abbout, she mentioned punctuation rules that have changed, i.e., older people were taught different rules than the younger folks. [/QUOTE] No offense, but uh, how do you give a talk on a topic unfamiliar to you? Beyond that, the use of the comma has changed over the years. The older generation (raised in an era valuing of fine literature vs. today’s culture of puppy mill publshing) was taught to use a comma subjectively thereby transmitting the author’s intented inflection/correct emphasis unto the reader - esp. when read aloud. Today, the beauty of that has been lost by comm abuse and further squelched by the introduction of rigid punctuation rules. ---
**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/32 "2007-02-11T17:12:09Z")
[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance] This is exactly what I was going to bring up, Poly. One of my better pals, partner in one of my businesses and now a Senior Editor in the Post Group, does this differently that my method. It drove us nuts for a while as we’d have to edit each others work. Note: We went to the same college. We both took Bonehead English (English 101) in our freshman year. We both used the same handbook. But he’s five years younger than I am. And he has a different version of the handbook…_one published five years later than mine_. My copy states that proper usage is “let’s get some lettuce, peppers, and celery.” His states that proper usage is 'let’s get some lettuce, peppers and celery." See that missing comma in his? Somewhere in that five year period the handbook from which we were both taught changed that rule. We still joke about that. [/QUOTE] The AP Stylebook says to leave the last comma out, too. And I’m finally getting broken of the two-space rule by my editor, because it screws up typesetting in InDesign. I think punctuation inside quotation marks looks cleaner and avoids a lot of confusion. ---
**Author:** ![Flipshod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f19dbf/32.png) [@Flipshod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flipshod)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/33 "2007-02-11T17:17:32Z")
One more data point. Agewise, middlish at 40, I learned to write with pen and paper and then switched over to the computer in my late 20s. I much prefer to read text with two spaces left between sentences. ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/34 "2007-02-11T17:17:34Z")
[QUOTE=robcaro] Why would anyone want to put two spaces between one sentence and the next. [/QUOTE] Because you were taught to. Two spaces after periods and colons. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/35 "2007-02-11T18:30:35Z")
[QUOTE=brianjedi] The AP Stylebook says to leave the last comma out, too. And I’m finally getting broken of the two-space rule by my editor, because it screws up typesetting in InDesign. I think punctuation inside quotation marks looks cleaner and avoids a lot of confusion. [/QUOTE] You know, the next instance where someone quotes the AP Stylebook in a serial comma discussion as though Roy Moore set it up in the courthosue lobby alongside the Ten Commandments, and I will respectfully ask the GQ Moderators to put a link to it and the Chicago Manual somewhere in the pinned threads. Really simply, the AP Stylebook is produced by the Associated Press. The Associated Press is an organization comprised of newspapers, radio stations, and other news media outlets. It is therefore an expert on proper procedure in **journalism**. Journalism is the craft of writing news and feature stories for general-interest publication, as in newspapers, magazines, etc. (as opposed to academic, literary, religious, and other special interest publications). In journalism, space is customarily at a premium, and unnecessary occupiers of space are removed. In journalism, the serial comma is frowned upon. Not all Dopers write for publications that use the standards of journalism. In the many, many discussions of the serial comma here, the point has been repeatedly made that journalism has one standard, and academic writing another. My post, and I think everyone else who commented on it, tried to make that distinction clear. Attention, world: **If you’re writing for a newspaper or magazine that follows the AP Stylebook, avoid the serial comma.** On the other hand, unless you’re the child of Ayn Rand’s Virgin Birth miracle, use the damn thing elsewhere unless your editor, teacher, or other source of style mandate says not to. ---
**Author:** ![brianjedi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@brianjedi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianjedi)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/36 "2007-02-11T18:45:00Z")
[QUOTE=Polycarp] You know, the next instance where someone quotes the AP Stylebook in a serial comma discussion as though Roy Moore set it up in the courthosue lobby alongside the Ten Commandments, and I will respectfully ask the GQ Moderators to put a link to it and the Chicago Manual somewhere in the pinned threads. Really simply, the AP Stylebook is produced by the Associated Press. The Associated Press is an organization comprised of newspapers, radio stations, and other news media outlets. It is therefore an expert on proper procedure in **journalism**. Journalism is the craft of writing news and feature stories for general-interest publication, as in newspapers, magazines, etc. (as opposed to academic, literary, religious, and other special interest publications). In journalism, space is customarily at a premium, and unnecessary occupiers of space are removed. In journalism, the serial comma is frowned upon. Not all Dopers write for publications that use the standards of journalism. In the many, many discussions of the serial comma here, the point has been repeatedly made that journalism has one standard, and academic writing another. My post, and I think everyone else who commented on it, tried to make that distinction clear. Attention, world: **If you’re writing for a newspaper or magazine that follows the AP Stylebook, avoid the serial comma.** On the other hand, unless you’re the child of Ayn Rand’s Virgin Birth miracle, use the damn thing elsewhere unless your editor, teacher, or other source of style mandate says not to. [/QUOTE] Um… ok. I was just contributing to the conversation. I wasn’t declaring a literary jihad on infidels who don’t adhere to it or anything. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/37 "2007-02-11T22:24:18Z")
[QUOTE=brianjedi] Um… ok. I was just contributing to the conversation. I wasn’t declaring a literary jihad on infidels who don’t adhere to it or anything. [/QUOTE] **Brian** , I owe you an apology. That post was intemperate and out of line. In my defense, may I say that I _mistook it for_ the comment that nearly always occurs in threads on punctuation re the serial comma question, which is to say that the Doper making them is insistent that _the only proper way ever_ is [with/without] the serial comma, as evinced by his stylebook du jour, which oughta be enuf proof for anybody, huh? Hence I _leaned over backwards_ to acknowledge that both sides have a body of evidence on their side. Now that you’ve said you were just putting in your contribution, I feel stupid. But I misread it as the latest Bull (_De Comma Seriale_) from the pontificators, and overreacted. Sorry!! :o ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/38 "2007-02-11T22:33:30Z")
I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, Polycarp - the issue of the serial comma is a bloody one. 🙂 I’ve been in academia most of my life, so according to MLA rules I stubbornly cling to the use of the serial/Oxford comma. I have an unreasonable affection for it, I admit. _Eats, Shoots, and Leaves_ sums up the punctuation debate in an amusing fashion. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/39 "2007-02-11T22:34:30Z")
Well, you can always take it out on me, Poly. I, for one, stand by my story that my pal was taught to kill that last comma _as a part of his standard learning of writing English_. While he’s a newsie now he wasn’t then and most of the other students I’m certain aren’t to this day. Feh, English is the king of ‘in play languages’, God knows. In a few decades we’ll all be communicating in beeps and blerts like Pixel. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2007, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614/40 "2007-02-11T23:11:40Z")
The only punctuation rule change I can think of is the tendency to drop the hyphen from compound phrases. But this has been going on for a number of years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/punctuation-rules-have-changed/391614.md?page=3)