Okay, I give in...

Ii's Wednesday. Is it still missing?

John

looks like the top corner of Matthew Jones' one eyed puppy.... thus the keep an eye on it and focus comments...???

Richard DeRuiter said:

EDIT: I also just saw that the question mark is outside the quote marks in the question. Here's how it's written (italics mine) How do I participate in "Get an answer to that burning question"?

Which is grammatically correct in this case since the quote "Get an answer to that burning question" is not itself a question.  Although maybe I'm missing your point... [:)]

Frank Sauer said:

looks like the top corner of Matthew Jones' one eyed puppy.... thus the keep an eye on it and focus comments

Thanks, Frank, for figuring it out! It was driving me crazy!

Richard DeRuiter said:

Ron Keyston Jr said:

Richard DeRuiter said:

EDIT: I also just saw that the question mark is outside the quote marks in the question. Here's how it's written (italics mine) How do I participate in "Get an answer to that burning question"?

Which is grammatically correct in this case since the quote "Get an answer to that burning question" is not itself a question.  Although maybe I'm missing your point...

I was taught that the punctuation always goes inside the quote, regardless. Looks like that may have changed since I was in school. Either way, it's not the easter egg, looks like it was just solved.

FWIW...this is how I learned it (note rules #2 & 3 in particular): http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp

Richard Wardman said:

If like, me, you love to see good grammars, and hate to see painfully bad example's of grammar, then i could'nt recommend this book more higher - "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation", by Lynne Truss; An hilarious approach to using correct punctuation.  

You're post hurts my i's; and messes with, my head! LOL

I will have to look at that book [:)]

MJ. Smith said:

Richard DeRuiter said:

I was taught that the punctuation always goes inside the quote, regardless.

While this is not the rule I'd want, most style books still push it as "correct".

Which is another example of "professionals" and "experts", many having advanced degrees, displaying little in the way of common sense. The only time punctuation should go inside the quote marks is if and when the original quotation included the endmark. In the majority of cases, marks should NOT be included. I have a Master's degree in education and have taught grammar, so I have knowledge of this subject, but the degree doesn't confer ultimate "trump" statis to my view. Logic, however, does. The not-so-funny thing about the "rule" to include marks inside the quote is that the majority of people who taught that idea only did so because someone taught them the same thing years earlier, and so on, and so on.

It's kind of like the woman who used to cut off the ends of her roast before putting it in the oven. When her daughter asked her why she did that, she said it was what her mother always did. When she asked her grandmother why she did that, she likewise said it was because her mother had always done it. When she asked her great-grandmother why she did it, she said it was because she had such a small oven at the time and it was the only way to get it to fit. Tradition is one of the worst reasons to do anything, unless there is a clear and understandable connection to WHY the tradition exists. Biblical studies in general is rife with such practices and "reasons" that lack logic or reason.

Many grammar rules are flat out wrong, and were wrong when English teachers taught them years ago. One that really bugs me is the failure to use what is known as the Harvard or Oxford comma. Many teachers mistakenly taught students for decades that there was no need to use a comma before the "and" at the end of a series. I see numerous newspapers, magazines, [<--Harvard comma] and web pages screwing this up to this very day.

For instance, it should be "red, white, and blue", [<--comma OUTSIDE the quote mark] and NOT "red, white and blue". [<--period OUTSIDE the quote mark]

Some people will say it doesn't matter one way or the other, and since it doesn't matter, the "stream-lining" principle of "if it isn't needed, get rid of it" ought to prevail. That was the so-called logic of those who taught this mistake. The problem with this lack of logic is that it failed to account for some rather common and obvious concerns.

The big one is the strong implication that using "and" without a comma indicates an inherent association between the two elements in the series. This leads to a significant amount of confusion.

Note the following examples using sandwiches:

roast beef, turkey, and ham (3 different kinds); roast beef, turkey and ham (2 kinds??--one with just roast beef and another having both turkey and ham?)

roast beef, peanut butter and jelly, and turkey and swiss (3 kinds); roast beef, peanut butter and jelly and turkey and swiss (5 kinds?? 4 kinds?? 3 kinds?? 2 kinds??)

Because "and" is frequently used to unite compound elements of an item in a series (turkey and swiss), it is VITAL that a comma is consistantly used before the final "and" in a series, otherwise semantic confusion is unavoidably infused into the communication as a result of deliberate grammatical sloppiness. The need for the Harvard/Oxford comma should have been obvious and apparent to the bonehead who decided it wasn't necessary, especially since the person who "wrote the book" saying it wasn't needed was in all likelihood someone with an advanced degree. The same goes for the Wellhausen theory of the "documentary hypothesis", which has had a strangle-hold on academic Biblical studies for almost two centuries. There are so many holes in that pseudo-theory that you could put it on a turkey sandwich and call it "turkey and swiss".

The upshot of this post? THINK! Never do anything or believe anything just because "everyone" does it and/or says it is right. Often "they" are all wrong.

Richard Wardman said:

Frank Sauer said:

looks like the top corner of Matthew Jones' one eyed puppy.... thus the keep an eye on it and focus comments...???

Mystery solved.

I suppose that there are two versions of fun out there: 1) Let the kids look for the chocolate eggs or solve a riddle and after having had sufficient fun, know when to quit and let them know what they've missed. This brings resolution and everybody has a good laugh with "I don't believe I missed that!" or 2) Never tell and watch the kids go home one by one by a dejected face and a "stupid game!" bitter  verdict and have a sadistic enjoyment of "I don't believe they still missed that". The difference between the two is actually how many people are having fun.

I have too much work to do to enjoy prolonging indefinitely such an ultimately futile exercise. But at the same time it is somewhat vexatious to be left with a "if you don't find it, too bad for you" conclusion. So I think I am going to pout and no longer play easter egg hunts!!!!

For those who enjoy it though, when you've found the solution you can always ponder this question: "if a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it AND if someone claps with only one hand, what noise does it make?". 

MJ. Smith said:

In fact, France appears to be the only nation with some institutional support for this function.

That would be incorrect. The Swedish Academy (the same that selects the Nobel Laureates in Literature) regularly publishes new editions of their dictionary, which is considered the normative one for Swedish vocabulary and spelling, and the Swedish Language Council provides rules for grammar, punctuation and so on.

I believe the other Nordic countries have similar bodies.

Wow, ten pages of discussion and somehow my contribution made everyone lose interest. Sometimes I wonder how I survive as a writer. [:P]

David Paul said:

It's the collar...

 

It also gets you free reserved parking at the hospital and in Florida most golf courses used to waive the fees for clergy.

Rob Suggs said:

Wow, ten pages of discussion and
somehow my contribution made everyone lose interest. Sometimes I wonder
how I survive as a writer.

Either that, or you gave the definitive answer and nobody else had anything left to say. Left us all speechless.

Or
else after 10 pages of discussion we were growing weary of the topic
already anyway and you just happened to be the last poster. Someone has to be, you know...no threads go on forever.

I'm guessing it's the latter. The thread had diverged from its
original intent. People who hadn't figured out the Easter egg already
had pretty much
given up on finding it, especially since it's too late to get the
reward. That's the category I fall in. Also I was away last week and too
busy catching up on email and stuff to pay much attention to the
forums.

One other theory: providing links to off-site resources tends to get people to follow rabbit trails and not come back to where they came from, or else if they're not interested, they'll ignore your post altogether.