70s-child wrote:Oh by the way, Tony, I read your remark on another thread on the peculiar punctuation that some Indian posters use: "Something that has always fascinated me, is why so many people who have been educated in India put punctuation marks in the wrong place. They should come immediately after a word followed by a gap before the next word - xxx, xxx but more often than not the gap comes before the punctuation mark - xxx ,xxx... My question is, is this the way you are taught to do it in Indian schools?"
The answer is no! :D
I've noticed people doing that, too - both here and in other places - but have never linked it to any particular country.
70s-child wrote:I grew up in India, and Indians who learn English in school (and that is a relatively small percentage of the total population), are taught correctly all right; but it is up to the learner to employ that learning and use the language correctly.
That is odd, then. I wonder if they are using voice-recognition software and reading out what they want to say, and the program is configured wrongly, and puts in the punctuation wrongly. I can't think of any reason why anyone would *choose* to do that, and it seems difficult to believe they are just mistaken and think it should be that way.
Moonraker wrote:70s-child wrote:By the way I have had to exercise great restraint and not point out their lousy punctuation to the person you are referring to. My feeling is that any comment from me will likely lead to a petulant outburst, for which I have neither the time nor indeed the stamina... :|
Yes. me too!
Something I would suggest should be left strictly alone if you want to remain friends with people (unless they ask for your view about it). You have to ask yourself whether you consider it more important to be seen to be right, or to be on friendly terms with someone.
Moonraker wrote:There is also someone who never uses capitals for names of countries, but does for other proper nouns. I can't remember who it is, by why should this be?
Are you sure it's not adjectives relating to countries that don't have capitals, Nigel? If they say "France" but "french", that might relate to the fact that, in some languages, that is actually how they do it: for instance, "Frankreich", but "französische"; "France" (or "La France"), but "française" - and so on. That's two languages that don't capitalize the adjectival forms of country names.
Apparently it's normal for national adjectives of this sort not to be capitalized in some languages, and people from those countries may transfer the habit to the English language, either unaware of, or forgetting about, the fact that such adjectives are normally capitalized in English. (Actually, I see a trend to dropping these capitals in English, too - as in "french windows", "roman type", and so on - but I tend to regard this as careless usage rather than a new standard which is now correct. It just looks completely wrong and sloppy to me.)
Regards, Michael.