Dear Mary,
Thank you for your great patience with our new members. This article was meant
to be a reply to your lesson for Dudu, to tell the truth. I decided to make it
a root article after I finished and found it a little long and maybe a little deep in some sense. :P
Not until about two years ago did I realize what an important role punctuation marks and capital letters played in English writing. I think one of the reasons
why Chinese learners of English tend to pay little or even no attention to this
respect of English language is that when we learned Chinese when young, we were
hardly taught about them. In Chinese there is no concept of capital letters and
minor letters. We have traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese instead. In
Mainland China simplified Chinese is officially authorized while in TaiWan, HongKong and some other regions the other is widely written both in formal and informal documents. Therefore most of us here read and write only simplified Chinese, and understandably, it's only normal that when they first start learning English they unconsciously pay very little respect to where to use uppercases and where lowercases.
Chinese has different punctuation marks system than that of English, though differences are not that remarkable. Chinese ellipsis each consists of six dots while English only three, and Chinese full stops are a circle (a ring) while English a dot. Despite the different way they look, though, they ways they are used in both English and Chinese are exactly the same. What may seem different, though, is that we were barely told where to place the punctuation marks and whether
it was necessary to leave any space. At least in my case it is the case. I am
not a man with short memories, but I am sure my Chinese teachers didn't bother to talk about the locations punctuations should beong in.
Spaces are right another similar aspect of the issue. In Chinese, no space is needed, so Chinese users normally see nothing wrong with words going on one right
after another without any spaces. We never know until we learn, that spaces are as important in English writing as any words or letters, playing the essential
part of making English writings look legibly neat and less cramped.
With computers and the Internet picking up steam more and more, some casually invented and lousily created Chinese expressions and symbols are becoming more and
more of a damage against the Chinese literature. In case of typing on computers, there's no misspelling in Chinese but "typoes" or incorrect substitutional characters. These improper substitutes are abused over the Internet from first pages to forum discussions. Another nuisance is of course the abuse of punctuation marks, as you may find out, especially question marks and exclamation marks.
I guess people just need a stronger way to emphasize what they are saying. It's
hard to tell what an influence this trend is exerting on Chinese language, but
it is sure that it is not a good direction to evolve this language of long history. As I see it, English seems to share the same problem.
For our new learners, after all, it is of the essense that we follow the traditional way in which punctuations, capitals and spaces are properly used. It's the
best way you learn the real cadence and rhythm of this language, and the issue just cannot be overemphasized.
Affectionately,
Panpanpan.