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My late father used to claim that he'd seen the following notice in a barber's shop window:
What do you think I'll shave you for nothing and buy you a drink
When the customer claimed his free shave and drink, the barber explained that the notice said:
What! Do you think I'll shave you for nothing and buy you a drink?
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Annamaria Amik Local time: 05:19 Romanian to English + ...
Reginam occidere
Mar 17, 2017
Jenny Forbes wrote:
My late father used to claim that he'd seen the following notice in a barber's shop window:
What do you think I'll shave you for nothing and buy you a drink
When the customer claimed his free shave and drink, the barber explained that the notice said:
What! Do you think I'll shave you for nothing and buy you a drink?
Hehe Here's a famous case in Hungarian history where punctuation was a matter of life and death for Queen Gertrude: http://www.math.ku.edu/~hetyei/courses/old/520/reginam.html Although this is probably just an anecdotal curiosity, it does show that punctuation matters: Reginam occidere nolite timere bonum est si omnes consentiunt ego non contradico.
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Daryo United Kingdom Local time: 03:19 Serbian to English + ...
I've never heard of the "Oxford comma". Is that different from greengrocer's apostrophe?
[Edited at 2017-03-17 16:35 GMT]
Is that different from greengrocer's apostrophe? Yes and no ...
it's a happily sloppy/ignorant greengrocer's apostrophe that decided to climb down from the ascender heights to be the baseline in order to transmute itself into the pedantic/posh Oxford comma! ... who said that promotion is always about going up?
BTW, these truck drivers know how to defend their profession ... anyone noticed that bit? Anything to learn from that?
A final digression - I remember another story from the time of Imperial Russia, probably apocryphal. Some official made some serious mistakes and the case was presented to the Empress. She wrote her decision in a short sealed letter, given to this miscreant to carry it to the Minister of Interior (apparently, it was a quite usual practical joke at the time - make you carry the letter with your own death sentence to the executioner). So this character simply opened the letter and found out that it was saying "not to Siberia" (IOW "execute him"). [This letter was her answer to a letter asking whether this official should be executed or sent to Siberia] He simply added a comma and turned it into "no, to Siberia" IOW "do not execute him, send him to Siberia").
[Edited at 2017-03-18 00:21 GMT]
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