What’s happening to punctuation?

Going up to London for the day yesterday, we took the train to London King’s Cross. Not surprisingly (we all know what’s been happening to the apostrophe) the announcement on the train didn’t show the apostrophe.

But if punctuation marks are lost, new ones show up in unexpected places. How about this:

having lunch in London

What does the full stop mean here? And do you have any other examples? And is it happening in other languages too?

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4 Responses to What’s happening to punctuation?

  1. Richard Bond says:

    It means “Eat until you are full..then stop.” teehee

  2. Dkw says:

    Perfectly fine punctuation. It’s a full sentence with the imperative. It’s commanding people to eat.

  3. Claire says:

    In the US, the apostrophe issue is reversed. They are proliferating because people use them to (incorrectly) indicate a plural, e.g., “piano’s” instead of “pianos”.

    • This is very interesting, since this is exactly how the apostrophe is used in Dutch: baby’s (D) for babies (E), for instance. But even more interestingly, this is how the apsotrophe was used in English in the seventeenth century.

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