Received: from flute.cs.indiana.edu by whale.cs.indiana.edu (5.65c/9.4jsm) id AA28017; Sun, 12 Feb 1995 14:52:52 -0500 Received: by flute.cs.indiana.edu (5.65c/9.4jsm) id AA11809; Sun, 12 Feb 1995 14:52:51 -0500 Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 14:52:51 -0500 From: "Daniel Yaqob" To: dmulholl@cs.indiana.edu, fisseha@gerbil.cig.mot.com, ybf2u@curry.edschool.virginia.edu Subject: Punctuation Picayune Status: R selam all, I was just examining yonas's reordered desta-based table and was thinking about the punctuation order a little further. When I write, I have a conceptual idea about punctuation and its role in a sentence. Perhaps not the same type of feeling other people have. Anyway, looking at the punct. section I see that present ordering follows closely to how I think of the character's, um... `abruptness to sentence flow', as it were. That is a , is less abrupt to flow than ; or : or . or ! etc. This is how I view the order of non-spoken characters as per their role of pause in sentence flow: " " < , < ; < : < . < ? < ! [" " is a SPACE] Actually . = ? to me, almost, I think a question demands a little more pause for thought when spoken. I hope you guys are following me. So... my inclination now is to shuffle the :: in the new table such that it follows the conceptual ordering I wrote above. I have rewritten the sera part below: \_ , ; : . \? \* \< \> \~: \1 \2 \3 \4 \5 Does this make sence?* Any objections?* -dan'El * These are questions, they require answers :-)