Throughout my life, I've found myself to be proficient at the English language. It's something that has always intrigued me, and I've always taken the time to learn the right and wrong ways of doing things with regard to grammar, tense, punctuation, and spelling. Before I decided to attend Montserrat, I contemplated majoring in English. I believe that a severe lack of knowledge of the language that one speaks is an indication of ignorance and laziness. It bothers me when I see signage and misspellings or simple punctuation errors, and leads me to wonder about the level of intelligence of not only the designer and editor, but the corporation represented by the aforementioned work.
I would like to design a children's book that thoroughly explains the basic rules of grammar in a way that is easy for them to understand. The book would be aimed at children in grades 4 and 5, ages 9–11. It will cover basic punctuation (period, comma, apostrophe, question mark, exclamation point), grammar (my brother and me vs. by brother and I), verbs, singular and plural nounrs, conjunctions, possessive nouns, and sentence structure (subject and predicate).
This book would give me a chance to expand on my typographic skills, as well as exploit my ability to organize information in a way that is easy to understand. I plan on using icons throughout the book to help explain certain concepts, or to illustrate example phrases.

Lisa Lombardini, 10 may 05

Fluctuating Punctuation

As I worked throughout the summer, I began to contemplate my previous proposal and its importance to me. I realize that the reason that poor grammar and spelling infuriate me so much is that I take it too seriously. I would like to alter my previous proposal to become something I can learn from, and have fun with, rather than just another way for me to belittle those who do not use the English language properly.
I would like to examine and explore the various uses of punctuation. Instead of pointing out the weaknesses of society, I would like to poke fun at the different ways that punctuation can affect the meaning of a sentence, just by changing a few marks.

Furiously, he added, but things just didn't compute.
Furiously he added, "But things just didn't compute!"

I also believe that an abstract approach using punctuation to create images and posters will also bolster my understanding of space and shape. This will allow me to take punctuation completely out of context and use it to produce large, unrecognisable images out of marks that people see every day. This interpretation would come in the form of posters and other large scale media.
With punctuation, I would also like to address the use of language through cyberspace, where instant message program users often use no punctuation at all to convey thoughts and events. They have also adopted an abbreviated language that has become widespread. My question is, "Is this language used often enough and largely enough to be put in an English dictionary?"
Overall, this project will give me a reason to not be so uptight, and to hopefully realize that even if a message isn't written accurately, as long as both parties understand the language used, and the correct information is transmitted, then no one really has anything to complain about.

Lisa Lombardini, 7 September 05