Originally Posted by worzel

I read in the back of a dictionary that you should use a colon before a list then semicolon to separate the listed items with "and" before the last one. Eg

Sports I like:
Football;
Cricket;
AFL; and
Rugby League.

Originally Posted by Sallyanne

I don't think there should be one after AFL

Originally Posted by worzel

Here is an example from the first page I googled:

"Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry; Babylon 5, by JMS; Buffy, by Joss Whedon; and Farscape, from the Henson Company."

...which has one before the "and" :)

Source: http://www.correctpunctuation.co.uk/...tion-colon.htm

Originally Posted by Big Galah

And a hyphen shouldn't be used when you mean to use em-dashes or en-dashes—if you know what I mean.

Experiment (this may not work on all keyboards):

Press the "minus" key. That's a hyphen. Twentieth-century.

Hold ALT and press 0150 on the number keypad. That's an en-dash. Pages 1–10.

Hold ALT and press 0151 on the number keypad. That's an em-dash—for what it's worth. This used to be represented by two hypens. Try it in Microsoft word (no spaces between words). Depending on your settings you may see it gets changed.

They're all different lengths and never have spaces before or after them.

An en-dash is the width of the letter "N" and is traditionally the width of a typesetter's letter "N". An em-dash the width of the letter "M".

The :- does not mean anything as far as punctuation is concerned—you use one or the other. It's more of an emoticon.

Sorry :zzz:

Originally Posted by Sallyanne

I was taught it is correct to use :- before a list.

Originally Posted by Ozzidoc

And how about starting sentences with "and"?

The experts say that it's acceptable, and that teachers were misinformed. Apparantly "and" has been at the start of a sentence for eons....even Shakespeare (sp?) did this.

(This info either from UK's Radio 4 recently or from the "A way with words" podcast, produced by NPR in the USA.....can't remember which.)

Originally Posted by Elvira

Shakespeare's spelling was cr4p... :D

Guy couldn't even spell his own name!

Originally Posted by moneypen20

Starting a sentence with "And" or "But" can never be right :mad: And I swear a divorce from both hubby and my daughters is on the cards if they continue to say "was" instead of "were" :rolleyes:

Originally Posted by Big Galah

And a hyphen shouldn't be used when you mean to use em-dashes or en-dashes—if you know what I mean.

Experiment (this may not work on all keyboards):

Press the "minus" key. That's a hyphen. Twentieth-century.

Hold ALT and press 0150 on the number keypad. That's an en-dash. Pages 1–10.

Hold ALT and press 0151 on the number keypad. That's an em-dash—for what it's worth. This used to be represented by two hypens. Try it in Microsoft word (no spaces between words). Depending on your settings you may see it gets changed.

They're all different lengths and never have spaces before or after them.

An en-dash is the width of the letter "N" and is traditionally the width of a typesetter's letter "N". An em-dash the width of the letter "M".

The :- does not mean anything as far as punctuation is concerned—you use one or the other. It's more of an emoticon.

Sorry :zzz:

Originally Posted by Clippies

I was taught that when I did my RSA typing :)

I still don't think it's an actual punctuation mark, just something that has been made up if that makes sense. I used to work in a stockbrokers and some of the words they used to make up were just :confused:

Originally Posted by Britishaussie

At last! A bunch of people after my own heart. I hate seeing incorrect punctuation, or worse still, no punctuation at all and no capital letters (some posts on this forum are very difficult to read due to lack of punctuation). I'm not perfect either but I did RSA typing and RSA III English Language which stood me in good stead.

Does anyone know anything about the hype about splitting infinitives? At one time it was considered bad English (e.g. "to now say"; "to not go", etc). I did hear that these days it is considered OK to do this, though to me it sounds awkward.

Have I punctuated this post correctly?

Originally Posted by worzel

Another common mistake is to say " would of" instead of "would have". Presumably because people hear would have said as would've which sounds like "would of"?

Borrow mixed with lend (Should be to lend something to someone else, borrow from someone). I remember my games teacher being asked by a classmate who had forgotten their t-shirt if they could "lend a t-shirt" looking confused when the teacher asked who they wanted to lend it to.

Immigrate (to enter a country) when you mean emigrate (to leave) is a common one on here

I seem to remember a very long thread on this sort of thing a few months back.