The exclamation mark!!!!!!!!

May I interject here? I think that both of you are talking at cross purposes.

Scrungee is correct about the author having committed a mistake in punctuation (either made by the author or by the printers). Where Scrungee has made a mistake is, accidentally, calling the erroroneous punctuation 'parentheses' instead of 'quotation marks'! This he corrected in post 10.

There is some ambiguity with regard to 'parentheses'. It is meant to describe the way of dividing a phrase from a larger sentence whilst keeping it grammatically complete. The normal way to do so is to use brackets but other forms or punctuation are acceptable. These other forms are usually commas or dashes but don't preclude exclamation marks.

I enjoy our little discussions on spelling and grammar and, in a recent thread, we seemed to agree that errors are accceptable in personal writings but not in official/commercial writings. Therefore I would be happy to criticise the incorrect positioning of the quotation marks in the quoted article but would not do so if made in a personal communication.

People do make incorrect use of the exclamation mark but I think they are trying to use it for emphasis.

Other punctuation errors can change the total meaning of a phrase.

 

Yes, you're being a pedant. However, if more people were like-minded then standards probably would not have slipped so far, so fast. Hurrah!

People will often at this point say life is too short for things like this, but I agree that it's important, situation dependent.

 

I agree that it's unacceptable for teachers to make grammatical errors when writing reports or letters to parents. Incorrect spellings are slightly more acceptable if they're handwritten, as we all slip up when in a hurry, but when they are done on a computer there is no excuse as the teacher can review what has been written.

Unfortunately, a lot of teachers were educated during the period when there was no emphasis at all on spelling and grammar and, to a certain extent, it was positively discouraged! (Exclamation mark .)

In the 70's/80's I was involved in a local campaign to have grammar brought back into the curriculum in our town. All the head teachers agreed and, subsequently, put emphasis on teachers being brought up to a better standard. Until then I had been teaching all my staff good spelling and grammar, and acceptable manners. Most of them had come from disadvantaged homes and had no good influences in those areas.

 

The BBC are currently asking for views on how to improve. I rather felt like writing in to suggest they stop trying to be 'with it / wid it' and go back to what they became world famous for - quality and decent language skills. With so much competition in programming why they think becoming one of the poor relations is a good idea is beyond me; they just become a vanilla organisation with average shows.

As for the schools - send the letter back with red ink over it

 

I enjoy a good discussion . Come on, everyone, pile in!