Monday, January 29, 2007

semicolons to commas

I remember going over changing punctuation by just making the correction (ie: turning a period into a colon by adding the other dot and perhaps circling it for clarity). However, in Exercise 6, paragraph 4, where they are changing the semicolons to commas, they just include the caret over the semicolon. Is that supposed to mean just cover the dot with your mark, therefore making it a comma with a caret over it? The second one still has the dot visible - is that the standard that the typesetter would just know to change to a comma because of the marking?

1 comment:

Pat said...

Yes, that's right: the semicolon is being changed into a comma by drawing a caret through the dot. The second correction looks like it was hastily done; the typesetter would pause over it, figure out what was meant, and then move on. Please don't follow that example, though. We aren't concert pianists or neurosurgeons, but we need to wield our powers with care nonetheless.