Given the popularity of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, I figure the time is right for a new form of punctuation. (Hopefully, this one will have more success than the ill-fated interrobang.) Here's the problem: you're writing in some form of internet-enabled texting program (say, an email.) You write a URI or an email address, in the course of a normal sentence, like this:
Can you please email me at info@designsonthewhitehouse.com?Now if your email program is "smart" it will recognize those as links, and attempt to hypertext them. However, it won't be smart enough to strip out the punctuation at the end of the sentence, and if you click on them, they won't resolve properly.
You must check out the finalists at http://www.designsonthewhitehouse.com!
My blog is located at www.ishbadiddle.net.
So the solution is to add a space in between the hypertext and the punctuation mark:
Can you please email me at info@designsonthewhitehouse.com ?This space, of course, should be called a hyperspace.
You must check out the finalists at http://www.designsonthewhitehouse.com !
My blog is located at www.ishbadiddle.net .
Hyperspace. Use it. And spread the word.
| Punctuation | Hyperspace |
Everyone should really be using angle brackets around URIs. This is important because many e-mail programs will break on parsing links that wrap around from one line to the next, using angle brackets will prevent this from happening (in almost every e-mail program). It also makes it unnecessary to use a space. Unfortunately, I can't provide an example here, because the HTML stripping of MT removes the angle brackets and everything inbetween.
Comment #1 :: link :: June 17, 2004 10:21 AMOutlook Express works fine with your example, it recognizes the punctuation and ends the hyperlink. Switch to a smarter email program :)
Comment #2 :: link :: June 17, 2004 02:55 PMThe question is, is the emoticon in Comment #2 to show that the commenter realizes that OE is one of the dumbest, most security-hole-ridden pieces of software released by a major multinational corporation? I’ll take it as the chagrin it should be.
Comment #3 :: link :: June 17, 2004 06:29 PMNope -- he likes OE, actually. Go figure, he's not being ironic at all.
Comment #4 :: link :: June 19, 2004 10:43 AMNope -- he likes OE, actually. Go figure, he's not being ironic at all.
Comment #5 :: link :: June 19, 2004 10:43 AM
