September 29
These
red comments ought to bring back some memories of all the ones your teachers
used to put on your essays when they handed them back to you.
I
can't really remember what I had intended to go on about the last time I wrote
on my blog in regards to punctuation. However, I can make some general
comments.
I
recently finished reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which you'll notice is on
my list of favourite books. It's a fascinating book to read. One can learn
about the correct--and incorrect--use of punctuation in a fairly plain but fun
sort of way. Reading it made me feel that I wasn't alone in my hypersensitivity
to grammatical errors, yet Truss does state the following (and this is what
lets you know that, although I may not be alone, I am not necessarily normal):
"...I'm
well aware there is little profit in asking for sympathy for sticklers [of
grammatical correctness]. We are not the easiest people to feel sorry for. We
refuse to patronise any shop with checkouts for "eight items or less"
(because it should be "fewer"), and we got very worked up after 9/11
not because of Osama bin-Laden but because people on the radio kept saying
"enormity" when they meant "magnitude", and we really hate
that."
Despite
my abnormality, I did learn a great deal about how important punctuation can
be, aside from the joke made out of the misplaced comma in the book's title. I
learned that volumes of exigetical works have been written on the Bible because
of commas that were placed in different locations in the Protestant and
Catholic Bibles; that there is no consensus on the use of apostrophes for
proper noun possessives, such as, if it's Charles' apple or Charles's apple;
that there are many more instances of commas and periods being placed on the
outside of quotation marks than I originally thought; that my own obsession
about grammar is surely trumped by those authors that have actually written
poetry about punctuation. This will not help my stickler tendencies, but for
all of you whose essays I still edit, this will help you a great deal, and in
some cases, I may even be more lenient on the placement of certain punctuation
marks based on what I've learned.
For
a while, what I've felt punctuation to be is that it's all about clarity. Lynn
Truss would concur. She states:
"We
have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing
ourselves that is often complex and allusive, poetic and modulated; all our
thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right
dots and squiggles between words in the right places. Proper punctuation is
both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of
intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable."
OK,
maybe "unimaginable" is a little extreme, but I can't help but think
that in our society of instant-gratification, not only do we give way to the
fast food that jeopardises our physical health, but we give way to fast
communication, without taking time to accurately communicate all that we mean
to say or all that we should say. This puts in jeopardy our abilities to
understand and to be understood. I heard recently that there was a revival in
what are now called "slow food" meals, those which take a little bit
of time to prepare. Why not revive our ability to write? After all, isn't it
all about effective communication? My personal belief is that so many of life's
little problems--which do sometimes escalate to become large, unresolvable
ones--are caused by either a lack of communication or lack of effective
communication. Rather than saying (chat rooms notwithstanding) CU l8r, why not
take time out to say "I hope to see you soon"? I can't say that I
would always take time to do this myself, so I cannot really challenge anyone
on this, but at least sometimes, at least to the people that are really important
to us, would we take time to communicate well with them. We actually do write
to people a lot these days via email, and I think there is always a time and
place for proper punctuation. Some sociolinguists will tell you that because
language is like culture, that it is dynamic, living and changing, that it must
do so for the sake of its own survival, perhaps all these punctuation changes
are part of the survival of the written word. But if improperly placed
punctuation serves to confuse readers, then does that help the language to
survive?
In
all spheres of our daily lives, whether in marriage and family relationships,
friendships, at work, and even in the marketplace, poor communication can be
the cause of many undesirable consequences. I, for one, hope to continue in my
quest to communicate as clearly as possible. I certainly do not always succeed
in doing so, but I feel the need to at least keep trying.
11:03 PM | Permalink | English Language
September 20
I doubt there are many of you still reading
my blog now that I'm back in Edmonton. I'm sure boring old Canada can supply no
adventure for the most mischievous of you out there, but then this is my life
we're talking about, and there is no end to the strange people and experiences
I have no matter where I am in the world. If you've been wondering where I am
or where I've been, I have been travelling a little again and also just working
part-time at my mom's office while I look for full time employment. As for my
travelling days, I only went as far as Northern Alberta, nowhere exotic, but
the place is as exciting for me as any other because it is one of the few
places, if not the last place, in the world where exists a sense of nostalgia
for me, a feeling that I am home.
Mom and I went up north to begin the
excavation of my grandmother's house, as she has decided to vacate the property
and move in with my uncle, her oldest son. The farmyard with the houses on it
no longer belongs to the family, but the land surrounding the yard does, the
creek that runs through the property where my cousins, brother, and I spent
many a summer playing and exploring. It is such a peaceful place there, and I
hope that if I ever have children one day, they will be able to play and
explore and discover the same way I did, that they will bond with their cousins
there the same way I did. It is wishful thinking, but it would indeed be nice.
I must admit that I did cry every day I was
in the house, thinking how it would be the last time I did this or that in it.
It is the location of some of my happiest childhood memories. Yet the place is
filled with mold and mildew, not to mention mouse droppings, and it will most
likely be destroyed in the end--health authorities may otherwise condemn it!
Thing is, as some of you will know, I have the maladaptive proclivity of being
highly resistent to change. As adventurous as I may seem to be, I am quite
happy in routine, in a regular schedule, with everything in its proper place.
No matter what I do, I have come to know that my life will never be this way.
Things, material things, from my past are erased on a constant basis. I
sometimes feel that those erasures are like watching my life die over and over
again. But it is dead. I live in the present. Where that life exists is in my
memories, in my relationships, and I daresay even in the person I have become
today. It is what I do with those memories that more important than the
material objects that cause me to recall them. It reminds me of having
reflected on the fall colour today. The sparkle of a yellow, autumn leaf, its
gold-encrusted days are numbered but for the immortality it achieves in the
minds of all those who behold it; I have beheld a lot of life in the short time
I have lived.
Folks, this is why I need a job. I have too
much free time to be thinking, and my heart and my mind always turn to
reflection during transition times such as these. I have been working a bit,
going to the gym, looking for jobs, and helping out a neighbour that needed me
to sleep at her place at night for a couple of weeks, and yet I still have too
much free time for my thoughts to play. They played enough the whole summer
when I was out of the country with little to no responsibility. Self-reflection
is critical in anyone's life, but too much of a good things is...well, you
know. On that note, I leave you with a poem I wrote during one of my major
transition times: when I was moving to Mexico. By the way, stay tuned for
reflections on syntax--yes, you read that right, syntax!
TRANSITION
TIME
Joanna
Gill, September 2002
My
heart had cried a thousand times
For
what would never be,
For
dreams once voiced in foolish rhymes,
For
hopes that did escape me.
But
the winds of time do often change,
They
can never one direction go
And
lead to places often strange,
To
mountains high and valleys low.
And
there may not be a choice
Which
direction you must take.
You
must obey the strong wind’s voice,
And
so must I follow in my wake.
The
direction of the wind has changed,
My
heart must end its cries
And
break from where it had been chained
To
follow where the new path lies.
And
though my heart has often wept
For
a life that cannot be,
It
must not think of the life it left
Nor
mourn the life it could not see.
My
heart must sing upon the wind
While
following its commander’s lead
And
know the new life it might find
Might
more fulfil its every need.
6:02 PM | Read comments (2) | Permalink
August 24
I am struck by the news today that Pluto
has been downgraded from a planet in the solar system to a minor planet, or
some such thing, and now our galaxy will only contain 8 planets. It is no
revolution, such as learning that the world is indeed round when you had always
believed that it was flat, but somehow, I still feel a sense of sadness. It is
because we rely so heavily on science in our society to explain life to us that
puts into question all that I know at this point in time. Indeed, I have long
known that science in and of itself was not able to provide all my answers for
me and that its truth must be questioned for its political, economical, and
cultural contexts, both in how the questions are asked and answered. Yet there
is a faith in the hard sciences, especially, that there are some claims we can
really hold onto as proven facts, such as what the elements are that compose
water or how many planets lie within our solar system. Still, it seems we
cannot escape our own human (and within this, technological) limitations.
My first experience with this was when
learning that there are many places in the world where they teach that there
are only 5 continents in the world while many of us learn that there are 7.
Geologists will tell you that there are 7, according to their definition of
what constitutes a continent. The 5-continent system is taught apparently for
political reasons, still dividing up the world into the political continents
represented by the 5 rings in the Olympic symbol. Yet the 5-continent system is
taken to be scientific fact because it can be reasoned that there are 5
continents perhaps for other reasons, and what purpose would there be to doubt
what appears to be an accepted idea in geology?
My second experience with this was Stephen
Hawking discovering 20 years later that he had been wrong about his theory on
black holes. So basically for 20 years, astronomy and science had been
operating based on a certain widely, if not absolutely, accepted finding about
black holes, only to find out that the basis was completely wrong. What does
that mean for the so-called knowledge we have derived from all of this today?
Then they tell me that they've changed the
definition of a planet, so Pluto is no longer in the solar system. Or, perhaps
the definition is the same, but advances in technology have allowed a better
view of Pluto, causing astronomers to agree that perhaps it really isn't a
fully-fledged planet. I liken it to suddenly finding that there are cases in
which 2+2 could equal something other than 4, that maybe there is a possible
world in which this could happen. All of these incidents serve to remind me how
fragile my own knowledge really is, and I must say that I feel a little
depressed because everything I know could be completely meaningless. King Solomon
did say in the book of Ecclesiates that even wisdom and knowledge were
meaningless under the sun, but the fear of Lord was the beginning of all
wisdom. What I think I know may assist me to live within the context of my own
being, but in the great scheme of things, that knowledge is certainly less
significant. What is interesting is how the significance of this sort of
ontological and epistemological question can diminish your realisation of your
own state in the world. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, just a
ponderous one.
6:09 PM | Permalink | Philosophy
August 14
Well, I apologise to those of you I haven't contacted
yet since I've been home. I have not had one moment of rest until today. The
first two days, I couldn't get back into my house as there was confusion with
my house keys being left in the house. I did eventually get in, but I spent a
day or so trying to figure out what to do to get in. Then the weekend following
was a long weekend where we had the Heritage Days festival, so I went to that
all 3 days as per usual. I picked up my grandma from the airport on holiday
Monday, and she stayed with me the week before the wedding we all had to attend
as my mom's house was full. All of that was enough to wear me out, and now that
my grandma is able to stay with my mom, I was able to take today off to do
absolutely nothing. It has felt really good to do nothing at all. So I will be
able to start contacting people back in Edmonton in the near future--perhaps
next week as this week, I will be helping out in my mom's office.
3:21 PM | Permalink
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