When you hear the term "grammar Nazi," you wonder to yourself what kind of symbol grammar Nazis would use in place of a swastika. Semi-colon? Emdash? What do you think?

Only Nazis use swastikas; only grammar Nazis use semicolons.

Did one of my comments inspire this here thread?

:D

Maybe two of them to get that stormtrooper feel.

§§

~~~~~~~~~The Grammar Police is Watching You!!~~~~~~~~~

And the SS would use both the en and em dash -- without white space.

...Just kiddin'.

(heehee- the thought makes me laugh) an umlaut is what i picture when i read "grammar Nazi".

As it is the most overused of all punctuation marks.

posts letters or anything else. My lack of use will make up for all those who use it too much use it gratuitously use it in jest or just use it.

Life short as it is is much simpler easier clearer without the comma.

I'm opposite, I think. I don't like the Harvard comma, but I feel that all other commas are beautiful. I know I must bug a lot of people, because I use the comma before ending prepositional clauses and adverbs. I know that can drive some grammar Nazis into a rage. I have, however, stopped using commas to offset essential clauses. I just learned that one. I have an MFA in English, by the way. They don't teach us grammar. :)

A totally made-up punctuation mark for control freaks.

:eyes:

Probably should have completed my thought. The interrobang was made up in the mid 20th century - long, long after the other more traditional punctuation marks were accepted. It was created by control freaks, for control freaks - who thought a special symbol was needed for rhetorical sentences, and those that could utilize both a question mark and an exclamation point.

From worldwidewords.org:

This punctuation mark is not yet standard, and probably never will be. It was invented in 1962 through the actions of Martin Speckter, head of a New York advertising agency. He felt that advertising people needed a mark that combined a question with a shout, that mixture any parent produces at stressful moments: "You did WHAT?!". His idea was to provide a marker for the rhetorical questions so much favoured by advertising copywriters. He asked readers of his magazine Type Talks to suggest a name for the character, and chose interrobang from among the resulting entries. It combined interrogation, for the question mark, with bang, an old printer’s term for the exclamation mark, a usage since taken over into computing (along with pling and shriek from other sources). Alas, though interrobang received some attention at first, it has never caught on, though for a brief period in the 1960s it was added to a few typewriter keyboards. However, it is not dead: its name appears in a couple of American dictionaries, it is in one Windows symbol font I know of, and it is also in the Unicode character set.

but the posts are about punctuation.

a punctuation mark as their symbol? :shrug:

I'd suggest an editing or proofreader's mark.

outside of DU. I think the original post suggested punctuation, and that's why the majority of suggestions followed that theme

Maybe that should be the required avatar for grammar Nazis. :shrug:

You could have a future in Italian propaganda. :thumbsup:

apologizing for my cursed "suburban anti-semitism" to visiting Jewish Beat poets.

Pure filth.

It turns out that the pound sign is not a true punctuation mark.

I should have realized this before I posted, but I was in a rush to name-drop a poet and maybe be clever.

Clearly it backfired on me and I am truly sorry to everyone who had to read my posts in this thread.

So I expect an apology for this apology.

nm

:wtf:

I think it should be this:



Bragging rights for anyone who can tell me what that is, and why it's appropriate for a grammar nazi.

:hi:

Maybe you're like someone else. Ever think of that, Mr. Smartypants?

Oh, and every proper grammar Nazi knows to use an interrobang as his or her symbol.