>Here's another one: should one close parenteses after a smiley
I've been fascinated to watch how people handle this one. I've hardly ever
seen the parenthesis closed. I suspect it's a bit like (quite sensibly)
absorbing the closing period or full stop when a complete sentence is cited
within inverted commas *inside another sentence*; sometimes the period
vanishes, sometimes it becomes a comma.
On the the other hand, I keep breaking my teeth when Australian news readers
announce the latest on `industrialations', when they mean `industrial
relations'. Do Americans do this? And how do American male news readers
manage to get their timbre way down there like that? I'm tired of my
squeaky tenor, I want to extrope my voice into something powerfully
befitting a transhuman. (Phew, I managed to make it relevant to the list at
the last moment...)
Damien Broderick