English grammar, I’m discovering decades after studying it half-heartedly because I had to in secondary school, is remarkably interesting. So, too, are my native tongue’s conventions of punctuation, spelling, and capitalization.
I know, I know, that sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
If you’re like me, someone born into an English-speaking culture, you probably didn’t really appreciate studying arcane rules guiding the use of the language you were already using intuitively at an acceptable level. In talking and writing, I could “play it by ear” and get things right most of the time.
It was only when I began to study Spanish that I realized the importance of knowing the rules governing a language’s usages and patterns.
Now, I’m studying yet another language, Australian English, and that, too, is helping me appreciate and understand the workings of American English.
Style manual: For authors, editors and printers is the guide I’m depending on, and it is THE guide. Revised in 2002 for the Commonwealth Department of Finance and Administration by “Snooks & Co.” (a.k.a. Loma Snooks and a half dozen other professional editors of long experience), it is a brick of a paperback in its 6th edition form.
Having paid $45 for it in shrink wrap, I opened it a bit reverently and hesitated to mark its slick pages at first, but now I’m underlining and writing margin notes as I make new discoveries and find confirmations and corrections of my long-held but poorly supported opinions.
In addition to telling me where to put punctuation, when and how to use the three types of dashes (em, 2em, and en) and the hyphen, and why we call capital letters “upper case” (when type was set in place by hand, printers had to find the capitals in an upper drawer or case), the Style manual explains well the differences between Australian, American and English English.
And there are lots of differences. Take quotation marks, sometimes called “inverted commas.” I’m using the US style here, double quote marks to set off words or to indicate a direct quotation. If I want to set off a word inside a direct quotation, I’ll use a single quote mark on each side.
For example: “She shouted ‘Stop’ as her son ran toward the street,” he said.
Australian usage is the opposite: single marks at the start and end of the quotation and double quotes around “Stop.”
And spelling? The letter “u” gets more work here, as in “harbour.” Install has one “l”, as does “enrol.” And “spelt?” It’s a perfectly good Aussie word and that’s how it’s spelt.
“Conventions vary,” Snook & Co. say, and there’s a gap between American language style and English usage. “Australian practice,” according to Snook and friends, “generally lies somewhere in between.”
I’m happy to say, however, that this guide approves of ending sentences, sometimes anyway, with prepositions, approvingly repeating Winston Churchill’s famous quip about the no-preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence rule: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”
Well said, Winston!
I can hardly wait to get to the chapter entitled “Shortened forms.” Maybe I’ll get some insight into “arvo,” “brekkie,” and “compo.”
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