I would love to know what grammar changes have occurred in the last twenty years. Formatting of papers as well as punctuation has changed over the years.
Hi Rebecca, Now you have me interested. I was not aware that there were grammar changes or changes in the formatting of papers over the years. In the college course I took about 4 years ago,I used the same formatting I had used 30 or more years previously for my university courses and I never had any of my instructors say anything about changes.
Now I will do some research to find out what kinds of changes there have been.
I was told in school that I had to space between sentence 2 spaces. Now it is one. Over the years, the formatting and grammar rules do change. Even on how to use commas. It drives me nuts.
The space thing isn't really a language change - it's a proportional font change. In the old days of single spaced fonts (i.e. typewriters), you put two spaces and it would do something. In modern times with proportional fonts the words all expand or contract automatically to match the space so you can no longer "play with spacing". So that all has to do with the way fonts work now.
That's the only change I really know about though. And there's a solid reason for that.
What change do you think there's been with commas?
Lisa Shea, Low Carb and Video Games Editor Low Carb Forum
I was taught to put a comma after the item in a list including the one preceding "and". My husband's teacher's told him not to. We have noticed many changes between what his teacher's taught him and what mine taught me.
I talked with a language arts teacher, and she said that grammar changes along with punctuation changes do occur though most are not huge changes. There is talk now of eliminating the hyphen in correct English.
When I got to college (the first time), half the class got their first papers marked up because of comma issues. The teacher was adamant that the rule was different than what we used. A poll showed that half the class had been taught one way in high school and the other half the opposite. That difference gave me a B instead of an A on my paper.
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