The power of punctuation.

[Traci66]

We all know that adding a comma, apostrophe etc, can completely change the meaning of a sentence, what I want to know is does this also happen in other languages or is it just English?

[MarkRae]

Yes absolutely, especially for other analytical languages where meaning is derived from word order.

A woman without her man is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

[tonyav]

Why, ' ; ? !

[TOWIE]

I think its a dying art in the English language - some of the letters I receive have appalling or no punctuation.

[tenrec]

Stick a few commas in it'll be reet!

[DTCwordfan]

Merde, savez-vous ce, je n'ai jamais regardé de près mon ponctuation quand j'ai été écrit en français. Maintenant, je sais ce que je fais mal. Merci, Traci. Qu'est-ce qu'un connard je suis bête!

[tenrec]

-best answer-

[bookbinder]

There's a song (English) called 'What now, my love?'. Translate this into German, and it becomes 'Was nun, meine Liebe?' If you move the comma, it becomes 'Was, nun[i, meine Liebe?' (What, [i]now], my love?')

[mccfluff]

i love sending my dad long rambling text messages with absolutely no punctuation at all. it drives him crazy - he falls for it every time

[bookbinder]

...the italics gadget seems to be having a mood again. Merde!

[EvianBaby]

I know some people have problems with it but it does drive me a bit potty when I read posts on here that don't contain a single puntuation mark. Even just a couple of lines without a single full stop or comma have to be read a few times before I understand what they say.

[commoner]

Punctuation whilst it means nothing to some is very important indeed to others....Some have almost come to blows over a certain item of punctuation which others are proposing removing it from existance ..

The Oxford Comma, which you may or may not know of is the comma which is placed before the and in a series........for example...........I have pigs, cows, sheep, and horses.

Normally no comma after sheep but that's where the Oxford Comma comes in.

A load of bo!!* cks I hear you cry..heh heh! but a matter of life and death to some very "educated" people..:-)

[Traci66]

dt, that might be very interesting, if only I knew what it said.

[petal54]

eats,shoots & leaves
I'm outa 'ere

[mike11111]

Sir Roger Casement, executed for treason in 1916, has gone down in history as the man who was hanged by a comma. Statutes contained no punctuation so it was supplied by the judges to interpret the true meaning. Whether or not Casement was a traitor depended on where the judges would place a comma in a section of the Treason Act. Unfortunately for him the judges' decision was not in his favour.

[jno]

so only one answer to the question so far... any examples, markRae?

Bookbinder, the same is true in English. The song was originally "Et maintenant".

[commoner]

Well they use it in French Jno...some would think of that as a foreign language !

Think DT said some thing like.....

Sugar, do you know what, I never looked closely at my punctuation when I was writing in French. Now I know what I'm doing wrong. Thank you, Traci. What an *** I'm stupid!

[commoner]

Lol....for sugar read S.h.1.t and for the three *** read a.55.hole

[Bambiagain]

Punctuation is important in German. The OH has gone awol for the weekend so I can't give specific examples at the moment, my written German being less than perfect. I'm definitely a pedant when it comes to punctuation in English, though.

[Jumbo747]

I remember (in the dim and distant past when in the teaching profession) 'doing' the apostrophe in an English lesson with some Junior schoolchildren. So far, so good, I thought: but then the wretched things became 'peppered' everywhere!
And now I see Cauli's and Potatoe's (!!) on market-stalls.............grrr.

[jno]

commoner, I think what Traci is after is whether you can change the meaning of a French sentence with just a small change in punctuation.

I dimly recall De Gaulle once spoke about protests in May 68: "Reforme oui, chienlit non". On the face of it it this meant "Reform yes, chaos no", but the way he said it made it sound like chie-en-lit, meaning sh*t in bed, which was thought frightfully rude at the time.