Patrick B, I think you are using a girly programming language. Real men program with curly brackets.

For sheer entertainment value, I’d also point out the marvelous passage in “Flowers for Algernon” where the narrator writes, “Today, I learned, the comma, it is, hard, to know, when to use, the comma,…”

Ambigulous Aug 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

nah, FDB: it’s the namby-pamby “have I finished this sentence?

Y’see, I would’ve used a semicolon rather than a colon there…

Actually, that’s one of the rare cases where either would be appropriate.

long now = new Date().getTime();
UserDetails details = usrMgrOID.getUser(eNumber);
long then = new Date().getTime();

if you see what I mean.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The free exclamation marks are on me!

To which the only possible response is:

“Multiple exclamation marks,” he went on, shaking his head, “are a sure sign of a diseased mind.”

— (Terry Pratchett, Eric)

As lspace.org says, this is “Something that Terry feels strongly about, because a similar quote also appears in Reaper Man“.

So there.

nah, FDB: it’s the namby-pamby “have I finished this sentence?

Y’see, I would’ve used a semicolon rather than a colon there…

Anyway, I’m a massive abuser of the spaced en - it rocks!!! Microsoft Word makes it into a spaced em automatically though.

No, no, no. Unless you’re forcibly chained to a ‘house style’ (like the silly old Chicago Manual, spaced ens are the way to go. Robert Bringhurst says em dashes “belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography”. I don’t mind an ellipse to mark aposiopesis, but built-in ellipses (option–semicolon) are almost always rubbish and three periods are just cheap and dirty.

But the fact remains I wouldn’t recognise an independant clause if I fell over it. I’m just terrible at that sort of thing. I can’t even reliably pick out the finite verb in a simple sentence. (speaking of which, is it the subject or the object that goes before the verb in a simple sentence?)

d

d

The free exclamation marks are on me!

Are today’s male writers just more insecure than yesterday’s about the manliness of their vocation?

Consider the chickenhawk, grasshopper (and Helen). The more gentle, bourgouis, office-bound and physically risk-free his life has been, the more likely he is to side with whatever option seems more macho.

The fewer traditionally manly things a dude has been called upon to do, the more likely he is to set up false masculinity tests that he can pass.

If I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them; although they are more noble and more able.
…
The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought; Then he added, sometimes. And the great sea with our friends and our enemies. And bed he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing