Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Punctuations – An Altered Place Could Give an Altered Meaning.


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“The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood. For the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.”
___Edgar Allan Poe
It's been a long time since I wrote anything for the blog, and therefore, I thought of creating a short and sweet blog post narrating a text message being sent by one of my closest friends, Anila. While it may sound familiar to many, I decided to put it up on the blog as I found it interesting enough to be shared. The content of the message revolves around the use of punctuation, which could impart different meanings to the same sentence when used at different places with an underlying notion that the perceptions may vary from individual to individual and there is a striking difference in the noetic views when it comes to men versus women. The message goes like this:


An English professor wrote the words, "Woman without her man is nothing" on the blackboard and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.
The boys wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."
The girls wrote: "Woman: Without her, man is nothing."


Isn't it amusing that the placement of a single comma can change the intent of the entire message?

If you have any other interesting example to cite, please post it in the comments section - and together we shall celebrate the beauty of punctuation.

Happy Reading!

10 comments:

PULKIT said...

:D
:D
:D

Ruby said...

LOL. I'm so saving this :) Thanks.

Pam Rosenberg said...

I loved this and will bookmark it for future reference. I like to incorporate words into my altered art pieces and I think it would be fun to use this. Thanks for sharing.
Pam

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RennyBA said...

Great punch line!

Btw: Thanks for the add at LinkedIn - great to meet you!

If you would like to visit Norway, you know how to find me, or you can always have a taste of it on my blog :-)

Manohar Bhatia's Blogs said...

Yes,punctuations are like our nerves in our bodies.Remove them or misplace them and watch how your bodies go for a spin!
A well thought piece,Sarah!Cheers!
Manohar Bhatia

Sarah Rahman said...

@ Pulkit and Ruby: I am glad you enjoyed reading it :)

@ Pam: Thank you for liking it, Pam. Let me know whenever you write a blog post on it.

@ RennyBA: Thank you for stopping by :) I will definitely be contacting you if I ever get a chance to visit Norway :)

@ Manohar: The example that you gave sounds perfect.

@ Waleed: Thank you for liking :) I have visited your blog and commented.

Happy Reading!

Martha@A Sense of Humor is Essential said...

I adore the book, Panda eats leaves, shoot, and leaves.
Visiting from SITS and the Movie 2 Weeks' Notice is Misspelled.

akd said...

here, may be the punctuation matters, but even more its how everybody thinks differently !!!

Zau fishan said...

Interesting.