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A rather lofty challenge to the grammatically inclined
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Location: Blogs Sly Comments |
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| Posted by: Emory Schley |
11/2/2007 4:51 AM |
In my newspaper column last Tuesday, I related how I had recently written something that required the use of three consecutive punctuation marks, and how I missed my chance at using four-in-a-row in a recent piece I wrote. Then a fellow employee claimed to have used five punctuation marks, consecutively that is, which gave me the brilliant idea of trying to see if anyone could come up with a sentence, using standard English grammatical and punctuation practices, wherein five, six or even seven or more punctuation marks could be used.
In the interest of fairness, we decided that spaces of any kind wouldn’t be allowed, and neither would repeated multiples of the same punctuation mark, like in “!!!”. Also banned from consideration would be multiple quotes within quotes within quotes, etc. which could conceivably create a syntactical monster big enough to chew up the entire planet, if enough quotes were lined up.
I have made a brief search, using Internet resources, to see if there is a “legal” limit on just how many punctuation marks can be used consecutively, and I’ve not found any material that addresses that particular issue thus far. So, I am presuming that one can use as many marks as are deemed necessary to make the written material conform to standard practice. This raises an intriguing question: Would it be theoretically possible, at least, to compose a sentence wherein every known punctuation mark is required, AND consecutively? A pretty tall order, I would think, but if anyone reading this feels up to the challenge, then please submit your entry to BITS@ocala.com. |
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Comments (4)
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Re: A rather lofty challenge to the grammatically inclined |
By Tommy F Thompson on
11/2/2007 6:25 AM |
| Emory,<br>I think untying the Gordian Knot might be an easier task. However, I'll look it up and see what I can do. For the rest of you. All I can say, is Good Luck. |
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Re: A rather lofty challenge to the grammatically inclined |
By Tom O"Leary on
11/6/2007 10:19 PM |
| In the last sentence of the first paragraph you made a grammatical error, how ironic! You used the word "grammatical" and then went on to use the word "punctuation" when it should have been "punctuational". |
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Re: A rather lofty challenge to the grammatically inclined |
By Tom O'Leary on
11/6/2007 10:19 PM |
| In the last sentence of the first paragraph you made a grammatical error, how ironic! You used the word "grammatical" and then went on to use the word "punctuation" when it should have been "punctuational". |
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Re: A rather lofty challenge to the grammatically inclined |
By Emory on
11/7/2007 9:26 AM |
| Tom-- I deliberately included that little transgression as a test just to see how sharp you were in these matters. Congratulations! You passed! :-) And thanks for reading my blog, I appreciate it! |
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