Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Punctuation

This has nothing to do with the Bible; it’s just related to the way I write this blog.

On my personal blog—and in email, on chat, and in other contexts—I’ve gotten into the habit of writing quotations marks in the hacker writing style, instead of following American English standards for quotation marks.

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don’t belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck.

The article quoted goes on to mention that the hacker style of writing quotes is now preferred practice in Great Britain—however, in Britain, single quotes and double quotes are used in reverse to how they are used in America. e.g. in America you would write

Said John, “He said ‘I’m going to the mall,’ but I didn’t believe him.”

Whereas in Britain you would write

Said John, ‘He said “I’m going to the mall”, but I didn’t believe him.’

Canadians, who are neither British nor American—but almost both—tend to use American-style quotations. I, on the other hand, have picked up a mish-mash of both; I use double and single quotes where Americans would, but punctuate around the quotes like the hacker style above.

I have decided, however, to try and write this blog, from now on, using American-style punctuation around my quotation marks. I say “try” because the hacker style of writing has become very ingrained; I often find myself, in my professional writing career, having to go back and “correct” my punctuation using the American style.

My reason for doing so here is that I’m afraid some Biblical scholar will find my blog via Google some day, pop in, and start harassing me about my punctuation not being grammatical. Priests and Reverends and Pastors (and whatever other titles you can think of) love education, and it’s exactly the type of thing that I can see them being overly worried about.

Leviticus 13

Leviticus 13: Rules for infectious skin diseases, and mildew

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Leviticus 12

Leviticus 12: Rules for “purification” after childbirth

Monday, January 29, 2007

Leviticus 11

Leviticus 11: Rules for clean and unclean food

Friday, January 26, 2007

Leviticus 10

Leviticus 10: Aaron’s sons are killed

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Leviticus 9

Leviticus 9: Aaron and his sons begin their ministry, and the Glory of the LORD appears

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Leviticus 8

Leviticus 8: Aaron and his sons are ordained

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Leviticus 7

Leviticus 7: Rules for Guilt and Fellowship offerings; the eating of fat and blood forbidden; the priests’ share of offerings

Monday, January 22, 2007

Leviticus 6

Leviticus 6: Rules about deception, and burnt, grain, and sin offerings

Friday, January 19, 2007

Leviticus 5

Leviticus 5: Examples of unintentional sins

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Leviticus 3

Leviticus 3: Rules for Fellowship Offerings

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Leviticus 2

Leviticus 2: Rules for grain offerings

Monday, January 15, 2007

Leviticus 1

Leviticus 1: Rules for Burnt Offerings

Friday, January 12, 2007

Exodus Summary

As the name implies, the book of Exodus is focused around the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. This is one of the most important events in the history of God’s people; many times, for the rest of the Old Testament, He will refer to Himself as “the LORD who brought you out of Egypt”.

Exodus 40

Exodus 40: The Tabernacle is erected, and the Glory of the LORD fills it

Back up—that was quick!

I have upgraded my Blogger account, to use their new service. However, now that I’ve done so, I don’t like how narrow this blog template is. So I may, at some point in the future, change it again.

In the meantime, this is the template that I’ll be using for a while. It didn’t take too long, which means the blog wasn’t down too long, but I’ll be doing it again, when I find a better template, so I’ll notify you again when that happens.

(Assuming that anyone reads this, which isn’t necessarily a valid assumption…)

Blog out of commission for a while

I’m going to be upgrading my Blogger account, to use the new version of the service, so this blog may be out of commission, or look somewhat strange, until I can get it all tweaked and up and running again.

When it does come back up, it will have a new look to it, which I hope you will like.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Exodus 39

Exodus 39: The priestly clothing is made

Exodus 36–38

Exodus 36–38: The building of the Tabernacle

Monday, January 08, 2007

Exodus 35

Exodus 35: Work begins on the Tabernacle

Friday, January 05, 2007

Exodus 34

Exodus 34: The Glory of the LORD

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Exodus 33

Exodus 33: Moses asks to see the Glory of the LORD

Wednesday, January 03, 2007