Second Helpings

You Live and Learn

I'm in one of my sorting out and getting rid moods. I seem to have a lot of those lately, partly due to weather and circumstances dictating I spend more time at home and partly a morose awareness of my own mortality. I have always hated clutter and confess I'm a bit of a neat freak. Not that you'd notice, as my hubby is just the opposite. As fast as I attempt to empty spaces he'll fill them up again, but such is the way of life.

I also spend quite a lot of time sorting things out on my computers. Photos, writing, websites, folders and music all seem to need constantly reorganising, though I often question why and have an uncomfortable feeling it wastes precious time. I'm attempting to read through my first blog on here before deciding what to do with it, but was aware it would be a very emotional task. So much has happened since that January day in 2005 when I decided to enter into the world of blogs.

One thing I didn't anticipate has started to niggle me. I admit I'm no expert on punctuation and don't understand all its uses, but I do find it difficult to ignore. I can't chat or send texts without capital letters and full stops and even with the daily Haiku I'm attempting to write I can't fully let go of punctuation as some sites advise.

I don't remember lessons in punctuation at school and I don't know if, like spelling, it's caught rather than taught. But I do know that somewhere down the line I stored in my little brain that a colon followed by a hyphen or dash is a way of punctuating before creating a list. And you know how many lists I create.

So, I'm reading through my old blog entries and suddenly come across a grinning face at the end of a sentence that doesn't belong there and I know I didn't put it there myself. Being a perfectionist it means I have to edit the entry to get rid of the offending emoticon. But alas, it's not confined to one entry, but every entry where I've created a list. It seems my colon and hyphen are not recognised as punctuation on this writing site, but at some stage after I'd finished my first blogging book was introduced as a way of placing a grinning face amidst your writing.

This is the punctuation I'm referring to...

A colon :

A hyphen or dash -

Put them together and it would be : - followed by a list, except I had to put a space between them because put together on WDC it creates this

I started to doubt myself and researched punctuation sites to check I'm not dreaming as regards this punctuation mark. Sure enough it does exist, although some sites claim it's peculiar to England and old fashioned. A fair description of yours truly I guess. In fact the Old English Dictionary defines it as a typographical mark commonly known as dog's bollocks.

Well I never knew that. We live and learn. I must admit though, that having to edit every entry where I've used it to get rid of all the inappropriate laughing emoticons is both time consuming and annoying.

I guess I need to start censoring my punctation, but do wish WDC hadn't introduced that particular short cut. Or maybe I should just say 's s to it all.