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At 08:06 AM 4/1/99 -0800, Meek, DavidX L wrote:
[David's lengthy requirements snipped]
I know I am going to get spanked for responding to this, so as soon as I'm done, I'm going to bend over so that Eric can get on with it...
As it happens, I am a docent in a Victorian-era Cemetery (Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland - my next tour is Saturday, April 10 at 10AM - you are all welcome to come!) and our quarterly education seminar is April 24 with a representative from a monument company. I will, with your permission, David, forward your questions to him. I hope that the answers reach you before your (as-yet-unknown) deadline.
The subject of punctuation on gravestones is one that I am *very* interested in, because I see all forms of it all over the cemetery. The most common is gratuitous periods, sometimes after names, sometimes after dates. My favorite is a stone marked simply "FAST." I also see closing double-quotes with no opening double-quotes and various other oddities that made me wonder if they reflected the punctuation of the time, or if the stone-cutter was using them as decoration, or what. Perhaps I can tie this to technical writing and avoid that spanking by speculating that perhaps the stone-cutters were early technical writers. Yes, that's it. The represent the Stone Age of technical writing. Whew!
==========================
Obligatory bad haiku:
Ah, reality
sets in too soon. Alarm rings:
Monday morning! ARGH!
Linda Castellani
Technical Writer
GRIC Communications, Inc.
1421 McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
