"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message
.. .
JR wrote:

Ken Fortenberry wrote:

One of my favorite roffian arguments, and it's my favorite because
of the principals involved and not the principles, is about that
last dot.

Should roff displayed on a T-shirt read R.O.F.F. or R.O.F.F ?


ROFF makes sense, as does R.O.F.F. What's the argument for R.O.F.F ?

As I recall, Steve Zimmerman pointed out to Wayno that the dots
delineated the division between Usenet hierarchies. When written
out it's rec.outdoors.fishing.fly , you see, no dot after fly.

It's a matter of how one looks at things. As an abbreviated form of
rec.outdoors.fishing.fly as a single entity, r.o.f.f (capitalized or
otherwise) makes good enough sense. As an acronym, roff works just fine.
If one thinks of it in terms of abbreviations for the individual words (or
parts of words, as the case may be) r.o.f.f. is just as easy to justify.
The apparent problem is simply a result of a coincidence, itself the result
of an historical accident. The use of "dots" to delineate divisions
between Usenet hierarchies has nothing to do with abbreviations, but it
LOOKS like it does.

What's important to remember is that it isn't important. Language is
infinitely malleable. The rules change constantly, are broken (willfully or
accidentally) with reckless abandon, and typically admit of so many commonly
accepted exceptions that thinking of them as prescriptive or proscriptive
"rules" in the senses in which the word is used in other aspects of life is
shaky.

Normally adept readers......and writers.....realize this intuitively even if
they've never given the matter much thought. Things like this are
controversial only among those who don't have enough to do.

Wolfgang