Punctuation in Arabic speakers?

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by rx-f

I can tell you for sure that none of her English teachers would ever have taught such punctuation to her.

" ... none of her native English teachers" maybe. But we recently had an Arabic-speaking English teacher here who did the same thing, but declined to answer my question - hence this thread.
I've thought of another possible reason. Arabic is written from the right to left, so the end of a word is on the left. Maybe Arabic uses punctuation as we do, but they count "a word, a mark, a space, a word" from the right?

.So ,this would be normal
.lamron be dluow siht ,oS

(Sorry, I'm running out of ideas.)

But I do agree that native speakers of other languages that do not use European-style punctuation, such as Chinese, are over-represented among punctuation misusers. Perhaps if no one wants to fess up here, I'll start a Chinese speaker thread.

[birdeen's call]

Originally Posted by Raymott

I've thought of another possible reason. Arabic is written from the right to left, so the end of a word is on the left. Maybe Arabic uses punctuation as we do, but they count "a word, a mark, a space, a word" from the right?

Polish is written in the same direction as English and I noticed the same problem in Polish children's (13-16 years old) writing.

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by birdeen's call

Polish is written in the same direction as English and I noticed the same problem in Polish children's (13-16 years old) writing.

If it's a normal developmental phase, we could safely ignore it. But we don't know the ages of those who do it here, so we can't assume that. Anyhow, the teacher wasn't 13-16.

[birdeen's call]

Originally Posted by Raymott

If it's a normal developmental phase, we could safely ignore it.

I don't think it is. At least, it wasn't when I was young. Of course I haven't done any research, I'm just saying what I experienced.

[BobK]

Originally Posted by rx-f

...

Anyway, it got me wondering if the triple comma was some kind of cell phone/text messaging phenomena, or if it's perhaps some sort of convention in messages on social networking websites.

...

On my phone, "111" (which is the same as "..." ",,," etc when in alphabetic input mode) is turned - by predictive text - into a smiley:

b

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by BobK

On my phone, "111" (which is the same as "..." ",,," etc when in alphabetic input mode) is turned - by predictive text - into a smiley:

b

Well, now that's interesting. But I can't help wondering why posters here couldn't say, "That was meant to be a smiley". Do you think it shows up as a smiley on their computers? I'm really not au fait with how this software works.
Like you, I grew up in a time when, if we wanted to a letter, we used either a typewriter or a pen and paper (and largely managed without smileys too).

< Off to sharpen my quills >

[rx-f]

"111" also generates a smiley in my (UK) mobile when writing a text message. Can't tell for my Japanese mobile: it seems to have broken. I'll test it in the next few days with another phone from Japan.

BobK may have cracked it. Well spotted!

I did a Google search for "triple comma" the other night and found a couple forums with people complaining about the use of ",,,". Perhaps this new piece of punctuation has become more prevalent than I'd realized.

[Over the top]

Raymott, I learnt basic things about punctuation marks in English but I stoped because I felt they are not necessary. I always correspond emails with native English speakers and non of them use capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, in names ...etc nor they use any punctuation except maybe question marks or full stops (periods) so why I should bother myself. I am not fluent yet in English and the journey is going to be long. I'd rather focus on more important features. We, of course, have punctuation in Arabic but it is far less than it is in English for example, there isn't lower or upper cases, English doesn't accept a long sentence without commas while in Arabic it is ok. There are a few other differences such as a reversed question mark and comma. Also in English we use a comma to separate words for example, they have a cat, a dog, a bird and a hamster. In Arabic we write it they have a cat and a dog and a bird and a hamster. There isn't commas but today some people tend to westernize their writing style and use commas instead of repeating and and and.

[Tdol]

I have removed a number of posts to allow the thread to return to topic.

[smaila]

Hi i've posted my story since 2 days and I have no replays can you check it please? it's under the fourm editing and writing topics " So Unfair" is the title and thanks alot.:D