Timeline for Is "hello" followed by "!" or "."?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
15 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:38 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://english.stackexchange.com/ with https://english.stackexchange.com/
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| May 11, 2016 at 15:50 | comment | added | Monty Harder | @ruakh You've suggested there would be a particle, but you haven't specified the punctuation rules for the use of that particle. If your hypothetical vocative particle does not require commas, then it is tautological to say that no comma would be required in your "Hello O George" case. | |
| May 11, 2016 at 15:35 | comment | added | ruakh | Re: "You are taking about a vocative particle rather than a vocative case": I know (and said as much), but if you re-read your own initial comment, you'll see that that makes no difference. | |
| May 11, 2016 at 15:16 | comment | added | Monty Harder | @ruakh You are taking about a vocative particle rather than a vocative case. I don't know what punctuation rules would apply to such a particle. It seems almost like a preposition, which would not need commas, (Ironically, the @ sign is used here to construct an artificial vocative. I wonder if it'll ever find its way into the spoken language.) | |
| May 10, 2016 at 20:03 | comment | added | ruakh | @MontyHarder: I'm not convinced. Are you saying that with the explicit vocative particle O, you would write "Hello O George!" instead of "Hello, O George!"? | |
| May 10, 2016 at 4:32 | comment | added | Catija | @hobbs if we were talking about that phrase, I would agree with you... Without the comma, it is wrong. But hello is a different category. | |
| May 10, 2016 at 1:40 | comment | added | hobbs | @Catija commas represent a grammatical separation of ideas. That same separation can be realized in speech as pauses, but there's no hard and fast correspondence between commas and pauses and more than there's a specific pronunciation of parentheses or quotation marks. The comma that sets off a greeting from the person greeted might be realized more as intonation than as a pause, but "How are you doing, John?" and "How are you doing John?" are still worlds apart :) | |
| May 9, 2016 at 21:48 | comment | added | alephzero | @MontyHarder Hello, Kitty? | |
| May 9, 2016 at 20:49 | comment | added | Monty Harder | Maybe that's the difference. I don't ever say "Hello $Name" without a slight pause to aurally evoke the vocative comma. | |
| May 9, 2016 at 20:37 | comment | added | Catija | @MontyHarder Actually, I prefer the Oxford Comma... so... you're wrong there. The reality is, punctuation is highly personal. Some people use commas constantly and others use them rarely... and, really, there is no one governing organization requiring they be used any particular way, and anyone trying to lay down hard and fast rules is overreaching themselves... they simply don't exist... so, as I say in my answer, it's all about what you intend people to intuit... when I say "Hello George", I don't pause... so I see no reason to put a "pause" (comma) in my text there. | |
| May 9, 2016 at 20:34 | comment | added | Monty Harder | Why do I think you likely oppose the Oxford Comma as well? | |
| May 9, 2016 at 20:24 | comment | added | Catija | @MontyHarder And the point in that answer is that, to many (including myself), they see the comma as wrong... | |
| May 9, 2016 at 20:23 | comment | added | Monty Harder | That "great answer" misses the reason for the "set off nouns of direct address with commas" rule, which is that English lacks an explicit vocative case. The commas, even when they appear not to add anything to the understanding, do raise the "the following may be vocative" flag, If I see "Hello George!" without the comma, it reads as wrong. | |
| May 9, 2016 at 18:30 | history | edited | Catija | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added link to ELU answer
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| May 9, 2016 at 18:09 | history | answered | Catija | CC BY-SA 3.0 |