That's exactly what the show was about -- misuse of punctuation in the internet age. I think it was slanted towards "it's not so bad."
They had the guy who started "punctuation week" in the US. He sang his "pronunciation rap" for the CBC show. I swear I could hear the laughter of schoolchildren -- that special laugh reserved for adults humiliating themselves with desperate, misguided attempts to be cool.
They also had a scholar of Arabic tell us that Arabic uses no punctuation, and writers in that language consciously make use of the deliberate ambiguity that creates.
Then they had a medieval scholar who described haphazard medieval punctuation -- and said she has her students try to read some Chaucer without punctuation and try to come up with alternate interpretations of the lines.
All in all, punctuation took a beating on that show.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-06 03:56 am (UTC)They had the guy who started "punctuation week" in the US. He sang his "pronunciation rap" for the CBC show. I swear I could hear the laughter of schoolchildren -- that special laugh reserved for adults humiliating themselves with desperate, misguided attempts to be cool.
They also had a scholar of Arabic tell us that Arabic uses no punctuation, and writers in that language consciously make use of the deliberate ambiguity that creates.
Then they had a medieval scholar who described haphazard medieval punctuation -- and said she has her students try to read some Chaucer without punctuation and try to come up with alternate interpretations of the lines.
All in all, punctuation took a beating on that show.