• BranBucket@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    You seem to think a centralized style and grammar book like the French have is the only way to have strict set of grammatical rules.

    An overwhelming number of English textbooks and stylebooks agree on the use of a period. We’re not talking about something esoteric here, it’s how you end a sentence. Omitting them is poor writing. Claiming artistic licence or understandability doesn’t change that in the vast majority of cases. I’m not calling those who omit them baby-killers or anything. It’s just poor writing that people have grown accustomed to seeing.

    Writers like McCarthy, Twain, and Joyce have the chops to communicate exceptionally well despite breaking these rules, not just because they broke them. The people in the office next to yours mangling emails don’t.

    And literacy rates are on the decline in the US. Take that however you will.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States