Subj : Quotation Marks... 2. To : Ardith Hinton From : Roy Witt Date : Fri Jul 06 2018 22:01:02 Brer Ardith Hinton wrote to Brer Paul Quinn about Quotation Marks... 2.: PQ>> and this taught me to make use of the comma before launching into PQ>> dialogue and recitation. AH> In general, yes... that's how I was taught. Nowadays I AH> tend to omit it sometimes because I had a university instructor... AH> probably USAian, I guess, based on what I learned in later years... AH> who criticized me for using "too many commas". Brits tend to use AH> commas with greater frequency than USAians do. :-) Ah-Ha! This is something that has been raging in Fidonet for years. My wife Nancy is a special education teacher, teaching modern English (not Brit) to those who have a learning problem. She has always said that commas are something to use to indicate a pause in text. If you were speaking that text, too many commas would make you sound like you're chopping off the text, losing your point. Thus sounding like a Scandinavian in his own tongue. Early encounters with one; Bj”rn Felten, a Swede who was taught British English. He used, in my opinion, too many commas and I critized him for it. That was over ten years ago and today, he's capable of structuring a sentence without so many 'pauses'. Not that his English grammar and the use of proper words in it is concerned though. In that sense, he sometimes uses is for are and sounds somewhat like our own Rev Jackson. Or, as Romeo replied when Juliet asked; "Romeo, Romeo, where fore art thou?" And 'Buckwheat's reply was; 'Here I is!' R\%/itt - K5RXT "It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain." Bram Stoker (1847-1912) Thus, we have "Climate Change Science" - which isn't capable of explaining anything. --- GoldED+/W32 1.1.5-31012 --- D'Bridge 3.98 * Origin: South-Texas Area Hub - Gulf Coast Backbone (1:387/22) .