Correct punctuation

[oligopoly]

I cringe when I see people punctuating ' :- ' to indicate the start of a list. Surely the colon is enough without needing the hyphen as well? or is this valid??

your thoughts please ?!

[jake-the-peg]

Times change and so does English and the use of it.

Fowlers is termed a dictionary of modern usage not correct usage.

An example or two : - (Sorry couldn't resist)

The term "whom" is now nearly extinct. You may say that it's "wrong" but probably no more so than the demise of "ye" and "thee", I'm sure there were plenty who "tutted" at those using the "you" in sentences.

In punctuation the semi-colon is distinctly endangered.

Personally I find inappropriate capitalisation a bit jarring but it's becoming more and more common in the Business World.

I guess the bottom line is that if a couple of people do something in the language it's "wrong", if half a dozen do it's idiosyncratic, a few hundred and it's a dialectic oddity a few million it's acceptable usage and if pretty much everybody does it you're the one who's wrong.

Question is were the people who started it in the first place "wrong" or trend setters - know what I mean? :c)

[oligopoly]

ok il simplify the question - would a teacher draw a red circle around this type of punctuation or would it go un-noticed

[hugnie21]

According to: http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/doc/punctuation/nod e16.html#SECTION00051000000000000000

"[a colon] is never, never, never followed by a hyphen or a dash � in spite of what you might have been taught in school. One of the commonest of all punctuation mistakes is following a colon with a completely pointless hyphen".

I was taught that a hyphen is used when the text is underneath the colon, but not if it is on the same line. It looks like I was taught wrong though!

[jake-the-peg]

I think you need to bear in mind what punctuation is there for.

It's purpose is to assist the writer in clarifying the text.

Unfortunately pedantry over punctuation and language in general is sometimes used in a rather bullying way by somepeople to assert superiority over others.

This very week on this website I saw someone simply post :

"Your grammer is awful!" - And yes they did spell grammer like that!

Such people would berate me for using "And" in that way too - And you know what? I really don't care!

I guess the apostraphe is different - misuse of that can easily change the entire meaning of a sentence with potentially disasterous results.

I do wonder though what James Joyce would have made of this question :- I think he'd have laughed

[Opiates]

Life is a bunch of laughs. lol.

In my personal opinion ... I think that the hyphen is unnecessary. As for a more informed opinion, if it comes why way i'll look and listen. But I won't be changing my ways of doing things.