[lit-ideas] Weigh-in on parentheticals
- From: "Julie Krueger" <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:55:50 -0600
Okay, all you die-hard comp types, you people who spell color colour, those
who split punctuation hairs for a living or to escape their living, most of
all, and still diagram sentences for fun, and those who are wordsmiths who
have successfully adapted to computer English usage: I ask you collectively
because if nothing else at all, you spend more of your time reading,
writing, interpreting, and putting language under a microscope.
I realize that asterisks have become a somewhat standard way of emphasizing
a word in e-mail, because underlining and italicizing and boldfacing doesn't
*always* come across well across e-mail clients.
My husband interprets and uses parentheses to indicate emphasis. I say that
parentheses have always indicated, and continue to indicate, subordinate
words or phrases. That if, e.g., a newspaper editor has to make a column X
number of words and the article is too long by a few, the parenthetical
clauses will likely be the first to go.
Jim reads the phrase "Please (publicly) reconsider your comments" as
"Please PUBLICLY reconsider your comments" whereas I read it as "Please
reconsider your comments (publicly, if you are so inclined, it might be
nice)".
Have parentheses morphed in the internet world into a mode of emphasis
rather than indication of a subordinate clause?
Unrelatedly, why do people insist on saying "pundiNt"?
--
Julie Krueger
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