Letter of Intent?

[margee]

OK, this takes all of the fun out of it, but in an effort to be transparent:

- Tony sees margee offer grammar advice that appears inconsistent with decades-old atrophied recollection of middle-school English.
- In a distorted pre-Advil state of mind, Tony attempts to square advice with recollection while - aware of the risks of publicly correcting anyone - deliberately introducing a few statements calculated to provoke reactions.
- Hilarity ensues.  Well, not really.

Thank you for playing.  I'm gonna go self-medicate.

 

and you'll notice that I corrected my comma error

[margee]

For those who care (which I'm sure is no one):

Put commas and periods within closing quotation marks, except when a parenthetical reference follows the quotation.

Put colons and semicolons outside closing quotation marks.

Put a dash, question mark, or exclamation point within closing quotation marks when the punctuation applies to the quotation itself and outside when it applies to the whole sentence.

Purdue Writing Lab

[margee]

 

[Felsen]

Speaking of grammar, will we be having a specific stylebook we'll have to follow in law school?  I tend to do better when I have a book that tells me what to do on the obscure rules that change from High School to High School, such as where to put commas and how to use semi-colons and hyphens.

One grammar thing I'm really worried about is the spacing after a comma.  I grew up in the world when we always double-spaced after a comma.  That's supposedly incorrect now.  Yet even with the non-monospace fonts, I still think double-spacing makes the paragraphs more readable.  I don't know that I'll be able to train myself not to double space after a period all too easily.

[margee]

Speaking of grammar, will we be having a specific stylebook we'll have to follow in law school?  I tend to do better when I have a book that tells me what to do on the obscure rules that change from High School to High School, such as where to put commas and how to use semi-colons and hyphens.

One grammar thing I'm really worried about is the spacing after a comma.  I grew up in the world when we always double-spaced after a comma.  That's supposedly incorrect now.  Yet even with the non-monospace fonts, I still think double-spacing makes the paragraphs more readable.  I don't know that I'll be able to train myself not to double space after a period all too easily.

Yes.  It's called the Bluebook.

Also, you double space after a COMMA?!   <-- shock and horror


 

[Felsen]

Sorry, I meant period.  I just got caught up with the comma rule for placement.    That and I woke up late today so I won't be fully awake for another half hour or so.

[margee]

 

[margee]

 

that's awesome.  And what number are you up to?



(Also, I've never heard of not double spacing after the final punctuation mark of a sentence.)

[Felsen]

The issue with double spacing after . ? ! is with the typeface.  On older typewriters they use what is called a monospace typeface.  Monospace typefaces take up the same amount of space no matter what character is typed, so the I and W take up the same width.  Nowadays with computers, the typefaces are variable space.  The . ? ! characters on variable space typefaces supposedly have a bit of space built onto the end.  It isn't a full space, more like 1/4-1/2 a space.  Since it has space built in, it only needs 1 space after it.

Web Browsers follow and force this rule on people.  It seems to be properly using my spaces here on this message board, but in many cases on web pages, I'll type out two spaces, and it'll get shrunk to one space as the browser throws away the extra whitespace.

I didn't realize all this till about 5 months ago when one of our new hires pointed it out to me.  I then googled it and found out he was right.  The correct way now is to use one space, not two.  I still use two spaces, as I think it provides additional clarity even with the variable space typefaces.  It is mostly an issue when getting involved with publishing.  They'll be very specific about what you need to use.  So it will probably be something that will come up for those on Law Review and the other journals.

[jess427m]

I don't think the transcript receipt gets reflected on freshlaw.  I sent mine in a while back - I think they just need it on file to prove that you have an undergraduate degree.

I'm pretty sure they won't bereflected on Freshlaw. But, you can call the Graduate and International Admissions Center to confirm that it has been received. I think they might be a little slow though... Syracuse sent mine out almost two weeks ago and Texas doesn't have a record of it yet. The phone number to call and confirm is: (512) 475-7391.