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An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
The words are usually written separately, but some may be hyphenated or be written as one word. Often the meaning of the compound can be guessed by knowing the meaning of the individual words. It is not always simple to detach collocations and compounds. car park; post office; narrow minded; shoelaces; teapot
For example, it is not possible to syllabify "learning" as lear-ning according to the correct syllabification of the living language. Seeing only lear-at the end of a line might mislead the reader into pronouncing the word incorrectly, as the digraph ea can hold many different values. The history of English orthography accounts for such phenomena.
For example, a linguist might determine on the basis of corpus linguistics that the word baht is more frequently a misspelling of bath or bat than a reference to the Thai currency. Hence, it would typically be more useful if a few people who write about Thai currency were slightly inconvenienced than if the spelling errors of the many more ...
The hyphen ‐ is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. [1]The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash –, em dash — and others), which are wider, or with the minus sign −, which is also wider and usually drawn a little higher to match the crossbar in the plus sign +.
Linguistically, Carlyle explores the humorous possibilities of his subject through exaggerated and dazzling wordplay, "in sentences abounding with rhetorical devices: emphasis by capitalization, punctuation marks, and italics; allegory, symbol, and other poetic devices; hyphenated words, Germanic translations and etymologies; quotations, self ...
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Comma splices are also occasionally used in fiction, poetry, and other forms of literature to convey a particular mood or informal style. Some authors use commas to separate short clauses only. [ 1 ] The comma splice is more commonly found in works from the 18th and 19th century, when written prose mimicked speech more closely.