Re: Punctuation (was Re: Lighting Some Flames....)

En réponse à Christopher B Wright <faceloran@...>:

> Patrick Dunn lanaþan
> >(well, it's a condition of my teaching freshmen the use
> >of
> >semicolons)
>
> I tend to overuse them. :) I should make two sentences more than I do.
>
I do the contrary: you'll never see me use semi-colons :)) . Actually, I never
felt the need for them, so I basically do without them.

> ObConlang (at least, I think that it's the right term): for those of
> you
> with scripts for your languages, what sorts of punctuation do you use?
> My
> Sturnan has period and question mark only.
>
Generally my conlangs only have the equivalent of the comma (short pause) and
the full stop (long pause). Azak, for instance, uses a short vertical line for
the comma and a long one for the full stop. Chasmäöcho, though using the Roman
alphabet, uses the different punctuation signs in a very different way:
- the semi-colon is the interrogative mark (like in Greek),
- the colon is the exclamative mark,
- the comma ends sentences, while the pipe | ends paragraphs,
- the stop is used as a hyphen (and used to hyphen quotes and sentences in
parentheses too, so if a sentence in quotes goes on two line, the first line
ends with a stop and the next one begins with one :)) ),
- the brackets replace the parentheses.
Itakian has certainly a strange punctuation: it doesn't separate words by
spaces, but pauses in speech (between phrases) are marked, but not the end of
the sentence. In Itakian, normally a sentence takes its own line, and only one
line. So there's no need to mark the end of the sentence. But if the sentence
is too long to fit on one line, it is broken at a pause, and carried on on the
next line. The pause in end of line is then marked with a special punctuation
mark (looking like the pause mark, but with a tail). So basically, in Itakian
end of sentences are not marked in any way, but pauses and the fact that the
sentence carries on on the next line are! :))

I always like to try and find unusual punctuation systems for my conlangs (when
I use punctuation at all. Astou for instance, or at least its conhistorically
oldest versions, is written without spaces or punctuation marks (like Ancient
Greek at that time)). Is it something other people on the list like to do to?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.