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True. The original meaning of "symposium", 2,000 years ago, was a party for getting drunk.

Teaching the use of punctuation seems to have changed since I went to school in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I get much correspondence and many story submissions from obviously well-educated fans that are missing a lot of the commas that I was taught should be used. From comments that I've received about my editing, readers today still prefer them to make a story clearer, so I continue to add them.

Of course, I remember when all elementary-school desks still had holes for inkwells. And when teachers wouldn't allow ballpoint pens to be used on papers; only pencils or wet-ink pens -- the first ballpoints smeared ink all over the paper and your hand.

Fred Patten

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