I know my grammar sucks. I’ve read your mail. I never really paid attention when they were teaching grammar. I didn’t take to it naturally. So, my grammar, such that it is, is mainly learned through osmosis. I read an incredible amount of grammatically correct English, and I pick up on how to write correctly as a result. I still suck.
That’s why I get aggravated when they start changing rules on punctuation. I’m actually fairly decent at punctuation. I was taught to add two spaces after a period and one space after a comma. Then they changed it to one space after a period. I’m sorry, but I’m defiant.
The latest change is even more annoying.
The comma
As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’:
They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.
I’m sorry, but I’m not doing that. It doesn’t read correctly. There’s a reason that you don’t place a comma between bacon and eggs, and it’s the same reason that you do put a comma between things of equal weight that are not conjoined. The lack of a comma contains information. It tells you that the bacon and the eggs go together to create one unit along the string of units being listed. Why add a comma after ‘a’ if you’re not going to add one after ‘b’? It’s confusing.
Add it to the list of things that are annoying me.
The panda eats shoots and leaves.
The panda eats, shoots, and leaves.
Sixth graders always had a hard time with why comas are important. I had them draw a picture of each sentence. Some of them understood.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a wonderful book on the importance of punctuation. I should pay more attention to its lessons.
If section 4 of the 14th amendment reaches the SCOTUS, the decision may hinge on the RATS understanding of punctuation. I hope they were the sixth graders who understood.
PF
Good example, JimF
The comma after b is optional. I don’t use a comma before and. The changing of rules isn’t usually followed. It’s how the sentence reads.
You’re right about the bacon and eggs. It would make no sense the other way.
I never thought the final comma made sense, as it duplicated the function of the “and”. But the rule came along, was accepted in all the style books, so I reluctantly complied. Now the unelected powers that be have decided to flip again. The self-styled guardians of the language are in fact debasing it.
BTW, Boo, I’m not aware of noticing anything wrong with your grammar. A fair amount of typos, but that’s a whole nother issue. I have much more trouble with your recent slide into Eisenhower “moderation” than the structure by which you express it.
I’m with you. I always use the oxford comma. If you don’t use it, you risk sentences like this: “Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.” That is a real sentence from The Times of London about a documentary! I had no idea Mandela is that old!
Just, be, careful, you, don’t, use, the, Shatner, comma.
And no, Oxford hasn’t ditched their eponymous comma. Read this for a clarification of the “change.”
Also, I read the daily post at grammarphobia and have learned a lot from it.
The other grammar blog I check semi-regularly, Grammar Girl, has also chimed in on the issue here.
Good links.
I should have known the National Review was hyperventilating.
It was interesting to see that the original justification for the serial comma was weight, not clarity.
The two are closely related, of course. But that’s what irritated me about the change. The weighting is screwed up without the serial comma.
I refuse to accept either “data” or “media” as singular nouns, as grammarphobia urges.
Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.
Much less an English teacher.
For once, I am in complete 100% agreement with you.
My grammar used to be horrible, but after debating for six years online I’ve learned a lot along the way.
One thing I’ve always been confused about, though, is exactly like the in the sentence I wrote above.
Is it correct to keep it the way it is, or should it read, “My grammar used to be horrible, but after debating online for six years I’ve learned a lot along the way.”
The latter reads better now that I’ve fixed it, but the original way is typically how I write things at first glance. Despite sounding better, though, I do not know if it technically matters which way it goes.
But this change in rules doesn’t really apply to me, as this is how I’ve always written using commas with respect to the word “and.”
Another annoying part is the difference between American English, and everyone else’s English. Like commas and periods with quotation marks. American English mandates that commas and periods are always to be included in quotes, unless it’s a single letter or number. British English punctuation (also know as “logical punctuation” — for good reason), however, requires that periods and commas are to be placed outside of the quotes, unless it’s quoted material.
drop the “along the way” as redundant and offering nothing new.
If you ever take German or Latin, or read a lot of stuff by people who have, it will screw up your word order in English. In English, it is propinquity that rules. Which is online, the debating or the years?
Some people write colloquially–that is, so that it “listens” better, as an English teacher once told us in school. Often that works against how it reads.
I don’t see the difference between your first sentence and the one in quotes (but, … in both). Your sentence w “though” has too many commas. “One thing I’ve been confused about though, … .
If, however, you want to overdo it, use “however, between commas and always second in the sentence
One thing, however, I’ve always been confused about … Gives an impressive, learned touch
The difference is the placement of words, and apparently allowed Tarheel to shed some knowledge for us all (well, me at least).
And I don’t think that sentence has too many commas, as “though” is used in the context of being a contrast. Both “however” and “though” are interchangeable in context, and should require a comma on both sides, no?
For example, “One thing I’ve always been confused about, though it should be a simple thing to understand, is…”
I’d say though takes only one comma, depending on which part of the sentence you want it to go with (with which part of the sentence you want it to go). Believe it or not, I’ve taught grammar of multiple languages. What Tarheel Dem points out is correct. Because English is not inflected, (i.e. we add few endings to our words regardless of their usage) word order/ sentence structure is all determining.
For example, how does one know if a word is a noun or an adjective? word order only. If it comes before a noun it is an adjective. Isn’t “street” a noun? no, anything can be an adjective if placed as an adjective.
The street dog barked outside my window/ the beige dog barked outside my window. etc.
ok. I’m getting carried away – just meant to log on to read about Paul Ryans $350 bottle of wine.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/rep-paul-ryans-pricey-pinot-noir.php?ref=fpa
Well I won’t argue with a grammatical teacher. Also, no need for the “believe it or not” haha. But is there a point where you would believe that “though” should have more than one comma?
And no, get carried away all that you want. Words matter, grammar matters. I mean, we’re arguing on points where only extremely anal people would find a need to point them out, so it’s mostly an educational exercise anyway.
Even more to that point, I live around people who say “at” after asking where something is, and fail to conjugate verbs in the correct way.
“Where are the towels at?”
“He don’t care.”
So. Frustrating. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard.
I’d say if “though” seems to require two commas, it’s being used as “however”, but more correctly it should be tied either to the upcoming clause or the clause that precedes it. But I’ll look it up, see what the dictionary says. Haven’t taught English grammar per se, only went into it in the context of explaining grammar and syntax of other languages, so I don’t qualify as an expert. But i love colloquialisms (where are the towels at – love expressions like that) – English is great because it’s such a flexible language, though I’m glad I learned it as a kid because it’s so difficult. And I love internet-speak!
“Though” is a throat-clearer. You might as well use the Valley “like” in it’s place: “One thing I’ve been confused about like is like …”
“However” generally turns independent clauses. You see it surrounded by commas a lot; however, it really needs a semicolon.
I copied an article about the Oxford comma on Facebook. The commenting went on for two days.
Who knew that grammar was as controversial as politics?
I thought those were the rules all along??
The two spaces after a comma (and colon) are print era relics. It is actually a pain the ass to make that happen on the web because even long strings of consecutive white-space characters are displayed as a single space on web pages. To get two spaces, we’d have to be adding a ‘non-breaking space’ character to the beginning of all our sentences (‘ ‘ + ‘ ’).
Agreed, for the same reason. Viva the Oxford comma!
The sad truth is that many teachers of grammar nowadays don’t know grammar, anyway.
I take that to explain why so many errors are so common in the media.
People are regularly wrong about when to use “I” and “me” and about what subjects call for plural verbs and which call for singular verbs, for a few examples.
And nobody any longer has the least idea of an object of a preposition or, perhaps, what are prepositions.
Just between you and I, that is.
😉
Language changes. I’m still fighting the “nauseous” instead of “nauseated” variation even though it’s clearly a lost cause.
And then there are media instances like “Anyways, it’s time to go” (cf Terry Gross).
I would have thought it would be difficult to choose among the three (not between two) alternatives.
The tyranny of grammatical correctness!
I don’t know when it was, but some time in the past 10-15 years or so I no longer concern myself so much about grammatical niceties. Maybe it was when it was decreed that most of the who-whom distinctions were no longer going to be enforced by the Grammar Police.
And in this apocalyptic era of overpopulation, climate change and economic meltdown, with democracy itself in peril at home, worrying about when to use a semicolon or where to place a comma seems rather quaint, not to mention irrelevant. Almost like arguing with the Titanic bandleader about what music to play as the ice-cold water begins to lap at your feet.
That said, I’m fine with maintaining and insisting on certain simple grammatical rules. But they should be few, and easy to learn and remember, as we save most of our remaining brain cells for more important things like saving democracy and maybe our planet.
Meanwhile, I do wonder whether new things like Twitter are going to just wreak havoc with our language skills over time.
Whenever someone mentions the Oxford Comma this song always starts playing in my head:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g
The lack of a comma contains information.
Yes! Exactly! Thank you!
And I’m sticking with the double space, too.
If we want to be reality based, it must be noted that the greatest outrage to the language in our time derives directly from our side. The clueless branch of the feminist movement decided that the generic “he” was “sexist”, and managed to make their silly claim stick.
This produced two results:
The age-old assumption that women were included in phrases like “all men are created equal” no longer applied, at least not comfortably. And
Abominations like “to each their own” and “every student is responsible for bringing their own pencil” became standard English. Thanks a ton to all who helped it happen.
With the and/comma question the logic of grammar is bumping up against fundamental semantic paradoxes
You shouldn’t feel so bad about the serial/Oxford comma (though you’re certainly right that the lack of it can lead to ambiguity and/or humor). I’m an editor and I switch back and forth (depending on the client) between Chicago Style and AP Style (among others) all the time. Chicago uses it. AP doesn’t.
You seem to have misunderstood. They are not suggesting a comma after “bacon,” but rather that you should use “croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli” instead of “croissants, bacon and eggs and muesli” (note the lack of the second comma in the second example).
That is, they generally prefer “a, b and c” (three items, one comma). But in this case (“where one of the items in the list is already joined by `and'”) they prefer “a, b, and c” (three items, two commas).
While we’re on the topic of typographic style (and this is a matter of style, not grammar), I note that your blogging software screws up quotation marks.
In this comment, I am using typographically correct quotation marks, but in the preview, at least, they are replaced with incorrect ones. Left and right double quotes are replaced with straight quotes and left and right single quotes are replaced with backquotes.
I didn’t misunderstand.
What I said is that there is information in the missing comma between bacon and eggs. It tells us that these two items carry less individual weight than other items on the list. Only together do they carry the same weight as a croissant or muesli.
That why you drop the comma.
But it’s also why you add it when you have three evenly weighted items.
OK, apologies for misunderstanding you. I’m still unclear on what it is you are “not going to do”, but it’s no big deal.
As for the explanation involving “weight,” I guess I can see that, although it’s not how I think of it. I would say that within the context of this list, “bacon and eggs” is one compound item, so if you’re a serial comma user, you naturally write “croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli,” with a comma following each list item except the last.
If you’re not a serial comma user, then your general practice would be to write “croissants, bacon and eggs and muesli,” but with two “ands,” that reads poorly, so you use the serial comma that you would omit in a list that consisted solely of simple (i.e., not compound) items.
This is one of the reasons I prefer the serial comma. You always use it after each list item except the last. If your general rule is not to use the serial comma (e.g., “a, b and c”) then the rule has to have exceptions when the list includes compound items. I prefer the simpler rule.
Mr. Boma provided the history of the Oxford comma:
That’s pretty much exactly how I saw it, even though I never knew the history. It’s about weight.
What I am not going to do is drop the Oxford comma in my writing.
Re: “What I am not going to do is drop the Oxford comma in my writing.”
Okay, got it. Good! I’m not going to, either.
I was confused by you saying “There’s a reason that you don’t place a comma between bacon and eggs.” While true, that’s a somewhat odd observation to make, since nobody suggests that there should be a comma there. So I guess that’s where I got off-track.
Well, this particular rule is hardly universal. It differs from stylebook to stylebook and has probably switched back and forth in the same stylebook over the years. In fact, “The Yahoo Style Guide,” specifically designed for Internet writing, recommends the Oxford comma:
http://styleguide.yahoo.com/editing/punctuate-proficiently/commas
So, Booman, you could always say that, as an Internet writer, you’re just following the appropriate stylebook (and gloss over the parts of Yahoo’s guide that conflict with your style).
Oh such a lot of fuss over extra words, commas, spaces and such. Take a look at what our youth are doing to our language with the “texting” phenomenon. That should concern everyone more than this stuff.
Just let’s please not discuss semi-colons. They always piss me off. Anyone who thinks they’re smart enough to use them does not deserve to be read.