h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I called you a berk merely because of your apparent complete insensitivity to the rest of this thread. While h2g2 appreciates digression, it certainly does not welcome inanities, which you appear to be abnormally rich in.

Kat, like the rest of us, has a perfectly adequate Personal Space for saying hello and making general chit-chat, rather than barging into what was previously an interesting conversation.

B

Diplomatic eh..Acceptance is the key so lets be on the main stream deviating at times.

*Careful steps over the obvious troll*

My rant was made in a hurry (as if you can't tell!) and I stupidly didn't spell check.

I hate the fact that I can't spell very well, and really want to change - I find it easiest to learn if people point out my errors, believe it or not I won't be offended. I've had a decent education and have no excuse for not being able to spell, other than being stupid.

If it's so bad that people find it annoying then it *is* my problem.

Thanks for pointing out sentence, - I never knew that and I'm grateful. For some reason when I'm reading I never notice the spelling, and I've spent the last 17 years thinking that sentence was spelt sentance (). I only learn to spell by people pointing out my errors so if you don't correct me I'll never learn and you'll continue to get annoyed.

I would've pointed out "sentence" but I was too late. I'm what you might call anal about spelling at times...

OK MR B CARRY ON BABBLING I,D RATHER WATCH PAINT DRY THAN BE PUT INTO A COMA BY YOUR DRIBBLE ADIOS AMIGO

I think that it's perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with the word "and". William Blake started "Jerusalem" that way, and if it's good enough for him...

I think that capitalised sentence starts are needed purely because it is so hard to read otherwise. I'm always losing my place ina sentence, and capitalisations act as little anchors to see where you are. Same with paragraph breaks, otherwise you end up with incomprehensible chunks of text. Obviously if people miss them it's unreasonable to get aerated about it, typos are only natural on something as quick as this forum.

And is it just me or is nice guy a bit of a misnomer? Rude and easily riled guy might be better.

And if you start a sentence with "And", then that should have a capital "A".

RF

ok i,m sorry dibs did not mean to be rude i just object to being called a berk when i was talking to a pal

Fairy nuff.

"I think that it's perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with the word "and". William Blake started "Jerusalem" that way, and if it's good enough for him..."

Jerusalem is a poem, and normal rules of grammar are often suspended in poetry

Any sentence in prose that begins with 'and' is a fragment.

And who would believe a statement like that?

RF

AND NOW, ladies and gents....


~jwf~

RF : True, as well as full stop a sentence may end with a "?" and "!" BECAUSE (*groan*) here people don't understand how a semicolon is used to stop *comma riot* thought it best to keep it simple.

So yes, many a sentence has been followed with a well placed bang!

~jwf~ : And finally! Take two of these and call me in the morning.

Dibs101 : William Blake, Jerusalem... Yeah, and the the song tell's of a *new* Jerusalem. AND there you have it, or don't. As much as I might like that song, I don't know if anybody else was told it's about betrayal of values?

KerrAvon, in another conversation you posted

"As opposed to Dolph Lundgren bathrooms, which would presumably come with an AK47 instead of a bog brush."

As is a subordinating conjunction, so surely that shouldn't start a sentence.

Honestly, I didn't trawl through your most recent posts to make a petty point. Honest.

And perhaps there should have been a question mark in that last post somewhere.

And Jab, not wishing to be rude, but what on earth are you talking about?

In response to no one in particular and everyone reading this thread in general:

For the record and the information of those who never had the chance to know this:

Capital letters, the whole idea of an upper and lower case and the way they are used, is a freak of print technology in the late middle ages. Early printers were trying to simulate a facsimile of the impressive hand drawn illuminations used by scribes to illustrate text, which usually incorporated a scene or symbol from the story into the drawing of the first letter of each chapter.

A brief history is here;
http://www.historicpages.com/texts/mshist.htm

Some illustrative examples are here:
http://www.zuggsoft.com/sca/documentation/GoldenFlame.htm

It is always important to know where we've been before arguing about where we might be going.

~jwf~

This is true, 'as' shouldn't start a question. In my haste to post a quick response, grammar temporarily deserted me

I know modern Greek has an upper and lower case (sometimes with wildly differing forms!), but does anyone know if this is also true of ancient Greek (and for that matter, ancient Latin), both of which predate printing by, oh, several millenia?

Didn't someone post earlier that ancient Latin used upper case for proper nouns, but not at the start of sentences? Anyone know how the Greeks dealt with such matters?

RF