On Tue, 21 May 2019 at 13:11, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

Feel free to ignore that list. It says “Klingonists agree,” but I don’t remember any kind of referendum.

It says "Klingonists have agreed that using commas is a very useful thing to make phrases clear." While this statement is not sufficiently supported by evidence on the page itself, are you saying it's untrue? Does anyone disagree that using commas is useful for making phrases clear?

I'm saying that Lieven's intuitive feeling about what Klingonists agree on should not be taken as a mandate. mayqel cited that page as if it is authoritative, or at least asking why he should do what it advises.

This is followed by "Over time, Klingonists have generally settled on these practices on the mailing list and other online places, not as a matter of policy, but as a convention." The practices listed seem to me to generally be what is usually followed, here on this mailing list and also elsewhere when Klingon is written in Latin script as plain-text ASCII. I say "generally" because there's some variation, e.g., I use <single angle brackets> instead of the <<double angle brackets>> listed on that page.

Nobody is obliged to follow common practice, but the reason it exists is because it's what most people do.

Which is still not a mandate, but it IS covered by my citing of what "will be best understood and accepted by your audience."

mayqel has left the list before, because of an argument over punctuation. I'm telling him that there are no commandments regarding it, and if he's going to pay attention to that page, he has to pay close attention to the "but as a convention" part.

  

Just use whatever punctuation you think best expresses what you want and will be best understood and accepted by your audience.

Which will probably end up being very similar to what's listed on that page.

Then why are you arguing with me? This was where I was leading him, without telling him he has to just do what everyone else says.

Once again, I understand what mayqel is getting at with his posts on this. He has his own ideas about punctuation and he wants to use it to be expressive, but he also feels the pressure of conformity. He wants to know just how much he has to do what he sees on that page, and why he has to listen to anybody. I'm trying to get him started, not smack him with the end result.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name