Ever wanted to know the keyboard shortcut for ...

[Epykat]

But Bob, by your own admission, if a building is not fit for purpose it should be demolished and if land is unused and is becoming a dog's toilet it should be built on. I really don't see your problem here.

[seanie]

[Epykat]

[seanie]

"..I've said that from the beginning..."

[seashell]

Clearly Epycat is referring to the fact she has changed her mind about what she said - one minute she was against the school from the begining the next she was in favour, once again from the begining.

I can only conclude that the two contradictory statements therefore occurred in parallel universes.

[seanie]

Other way around.

First she was in favour of the school from the beginning.

Then she was against the school from the beginning.

[seashell]

I feel dizzy just thinking about it, so I think my confusion is justified, Seanie!

Fair enough to change your mind, but that's completely different to denying you previously held the opposing view.

[Porty]

"Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with A-B-C
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi"

[Epykat]

[seanie]

Has it been Epykat right from the beginning?

[seashell]

And it's seashell, EpyKat - seashell…

By the way, it is also convention to use three dots for an ellipsis, not five (keyboard shortcut ALT+0133)

[seashell]

[gillian]

[Scoop]

[Pal of Porty]

[seashell]

[Scoop]

[Scoop]

[seashell]

[Scoop]

[Scoop]

[seashell]

[seashell]

[gillian]

Phew!! don't you all just wish that decision would come through?

[Scoop]

[Scoop]

[Epykat]

[wangi]

Because I'm not perfect and lost the will to live moving it for the second time...

[seashell]

Hey wangi - we probably don't say this often enough: thanks for all the work you do here.
Not an easy job and I'm sure your patience is sorely tried at times.

[wangi]

No probs!

And if there are any other punctuation fetishists out there be sure to check out "Shady Characters: The secret life of punctuation" at http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/ - especially the earlier stuff. The guy's from Edinburgh and is turning it into a book...

[rathbone]

Laugh ... I nearly wet myself...

As a punctuation fetishist I just had to dash off and check ...

The most common form of an ellipsis is a row of three periods or full stops (. . .) or a pre-composed triple-dot glyph (…). Although an ellipsis is technically complete with three periods its rise in popularity as a "trailing-off" or "silence" indicator, particularly in mid-20th century comic strip and comic book prose writing, has led to expanded uses online. Today, extended ellipsis anywhere from two to dozens of periods have become common constructions in Internet chat rooms and text messages

Different ‘expert’ sources give different points of view:

Bringhurst’s ‘Essentials of Typographic Style’ holds that the details of typesetting ellipsis depend on the character and size of the font being set and the typographer's preference.

The Chicago Manual of Style recommends that an ellipsis be formed by typing three periods.

The Modern Language Association, however, says that an ellipsis must include spaces before and after each dot in all uses.

The Associated Press Manual holds that when the omitted text contains a period, a four-dot, spaced (except for before the first dot) ellipsis (. . . . ) should be used.

In computing several ellipsis characters have been codified, depending on the system used. There are 8 in Unicode, 5 in TEX, 3 in HTML, 3 in Windows, 2 in MS-Dos and 1 in OSX, all of them slightly different.

Excuse me while I now go off to measure my ellipsis with a micrometer ...........
The rest is silence ...