Assume v. Presume

Anyone wish to comment on Jacob Rees-Mogg's style rules
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Was there ever a . after Miss? I agree with no full stop after Mr, Mrs, Dr. (oops!)
Esq. :rolling:. What century is he in. Oh, it's JR-M, so at least two hundred years ago.
Double space after full stop. Thought that went out about 1950.
Comma after and. Not sure about that one.
Imperial measurements. Sure, I'm going to do scientific work in mph, fps, ft. lb. per dog biscuit or whatever.
Is someone going to pay JR-M twelve pound thirteen shillings and five pence three farthings for his work?
The banned word list looks like perfect fodder for the Uxbridge English Dictionary.
 
EEPhil said:
Anyone wish to comment on Jacob Rees-Mogg's style rules
View attachment 4189
Was there ever a . after Miss? I agree with no full stop after Mr, Mrs, Dr. (oops!)
Esq. :rolling:. What century is he in. Oh, it's JR-M, so at least two hundred years ago.
Double space after full stop. Thought that went out about 1950.
Comma after and. Not sure about that one.
Imperial measurements. Sure, I'm going to do scientific work in mph, fps, ft. lb. per dog biscuit or whatever.
Is someone going to pay JR-M twelve pound thirteen shillings and five pence three farthings for his work?
The banned word list looks like perfect fodder for the Uxbridge English Dictionary.
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I suppose that if that is how he wants things done, and is paying for it, then it is up to him. There is nothing wrong with the Oxford comma though, in fact it can be very useful: see here. Sometimes it is essential for clarity. An example “I love my parents, Jane and Fred”. Are Jane and Fred my parents or two thirds of a menage-a-trois? Anyway as Ezra Koenig from the band Vampire Weekend sang "Who gives a f*** about an Oxford Comma?"
 
I understand your concerns MET, but due to ongoing very unacceptable disappointment with your posts, I speculate that I should meet with yourself to ascertain whether or not I will be pleased to learn that they are no longer fit for purpose and, hopefully, whether or not I should invest a lot more time discussing this point. :frantic:
,and not to mention that the Oxford comma comes before the and, not after it.
 
prpr said:
View attachment 4190

:)
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Bgr! I knew I'd get in a mess with that. Lack of research on my part!
Trev said:
Oxford comma comes before the and, not after it.
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That was one of the reasons I wasn't sure about the "comma after and". I thought someone at the Mail might have screwed up.
...And shouldn't it say "full stop" not "fullstop". (Looks to BH for adjudication)
MontysEvilTwin said:
I love my parents, Jane and Fred
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That could be four people. Two parents plus Jane and Fred. Probably wrongly, I would try to make the meaning more obvious by writing: I love my parents (Jane and Fred).
Isn't the comma needed in cases such as: I have just been shopping. I visited Boots, HMV, John Lewis, and Marks and Spencer. If I don't include the final comma, did I visit a store called Marks followed by one called Spencer? (Bad example, but you get the point).
 
Double space after a full stop is one convention (note, convention not rule) that I follow. But one convention I think is missing, presumably because he is a classicist rather than a scientist, in particular a mathematician is the use of the three dot ellipsis to indicate continuation of a finite series but a four dot ellipsis to indicate an infinite continuation. For example: (that colon is another convention I was taught to use)

All counting number up to a hundred: 1, 2, 3, ... , 99, 100
All counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, ....
 
gomezz said:
three dot ellipsis to indicate continuation of a finite series but a four dot ellipsis to indicate an infinite continuation.
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I'm sure they didn't teach me that in Engineering Mathematics. In fact, I've just checked an undergraduate textbook produced by the (then) Department of Theoretical Mechanics which has a Fourier Series as three dots. They could well be wrong. I didn't call them the department of theoretical maniacs for nothing!
 
Perhaps they realised that engineering students wouldn't get the point of the extra point. :)

(the pace of those fresher year courses also attended by the engineers were tediously slow for us maths students who just wanted to get on with it)
 
I agree with most of that list. Not the imperial units though.
I still use the double space after a full stop, where possible, such as emails. (HTML strips out two or more consecutive spaces, so in here it won't work.)
 
EEPhil said:
And shouldn't it say "full stop" not "fullstop"
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I would say so, yes.

I definitely approve of the Oxford Comma (not that I've heard it called that before), I believe it is more logical to separate all the items of a list and see no reason to treat the penultimate item differently. The "and" prefix to the ultimate item signals the end of the list; otherwise, without the comma, one is unsure whether the final item is two or compound. I call this "functional punctuation" (punctuation defined by logic and function instead of illogical convention).

I do not understand the point about no dot after the abbreviation Ms. [That's a full stop] Either you use dots in abbreviations, or you don't. I choose not to, but apply that throughout - so I would not write "M.P.".

Is that too many 'I's? What to do instead? "Ego"?
 
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That is my understanding. It is up to people to take more care in enumerating sub-lists within lists and using compound sentences. As a mathematician I tend to parse the logic of a compound sentence according to strict logical rules and to identify ambiguities. Lawyers seem to use different rules which I often find illogical.
 
Black Hole said:
I do not understand the point about no dot after the abbreviation Ms.
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Is 'Ms' an abbreviation? I've often wondered this since I don't know what the full word would be if it is.

I'm a bit vague with using abbreviation stops myself. Since the modern trend is not to use them I tend to add them only if the current context means they look more correct (to me) or just to emphasise that something is an abbreviation or acronym.
 
As an aside, I remember going to a Victor Borge concert and he finished the programme with his 'phonetic pronunciation'. For anyone not familiar with VB an example is here
 
RobH1 said:
As an aside, I remember going to a Victor Borge concert and he finished the programme with his 'phonetic pronunciation'.
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I've seen that part on TV. I can't remember the exact sounds for each punctuation mark. Very difficult to explain in text isn't it?
 
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