Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I think Cinisajoy has it right. Not only do rules change but we've just gone through a century or two where rules became more rigid. Linguists like to say that grammar is descriptive, not prescriptive. When I was a kid learning grammar my teachers would have kicked me out of school for suggesting that. Of course I hadn't heard about that then either.
Today we like to think of the right way to write things but in earlier times the right way wasn't so important. I think in the past couple of decades we've begun to move away from that rigid way of looking at things.
Barry
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You are correct if you are talking about much earlier times but from my researches by at least the 1920s, in the UK being able to use correct and punctuation were considered very important by schools. The punctuation taught then and up to the 1960s was considered
to be the one and only correct form any deviation from it my my school and the marks (grade) you got would be reduced.