Grammar Police - Graduate School

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

Oxford comma?

That was a line from a Vampire Weekend song.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

Theoretically that's true, you could construct a sentence without the comma that would be misleading.

Which Quik did thirteen posts prior.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

Which Quik did thirteen posts prior.

How is that sentence misleading? Unless you think that God and Ayn Rand are having babies together?

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

How is that sentence misleading? Unless you think that God and Ayn Rand are having babies together?

"Sir, perhaps you'd be more comfortable at one of our lower-stakes tables."

[MJ4H]

Why the fuck is "food for dinner, bananas, and cat food" so damn hard for you people? Why would we rather pull out our spleen through our nostril than put that comma in there? I honestly don't understand this.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by MattJones4Heisman

Why the fuck is "food for dinner, bananas, and cat food" so damn hard for you people? Why would we rather pull out our spleen through our nostril than put that comma in there? I honestly don't understand this.

Commas are money, dude.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

How is that sentence misleading? Unless you think that God and Ayn Rand are having babies together?

Come now, I don't think anyone implied the speaker had any siblings.

[rkmsuf]

only people trying to show off put the extra comma in there

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

"Sir, perhaps you'd be more comfortable at one of our lower-stakes tables."

Yeah. Probably. My final word: Grammar is not a set of rules for construction, but a set of rules for understanding. Grammar is used for reading.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by NoMyths

The AP style book may accept confusion as a standard of doing business, but us hardliners certainly don't. The serial comma is something over which I've fought kind of hardcore in my editing and teaching. There are no disadvantages to using it, but all sorts of problems can crop up when it isn't used.

The AP dropping it probably has more to do with print costs (same reason for not having two spaces after a period in print -- saves ink and paper) than grammar.

Now when you go to the grocery store later please pick up food for dinner, bananas and cat food.

i agree with NoMyths. And I'm surprised that the AP style book accepts dropping it. I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS harp on that. It's my grammar-nazi pet peeve.

[Toddzilla]

Punctuation suck's

[MikeVic]

In a listing, I agree that I like seeing that comma there. And I use it all the time. So my sentences are constructed thusly:

"My favourite things in the world are myself, my car, and my alcohol."

[rkmsuf]

that comma is gratuitous, egregious, preposterous and outrageous.

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by rkmsuf

that comma is gratuitous, egregious, preposterous and outrageous.

How dare you.

[cuervo72]

He forgot lewd, lascivious, and salacious.

[rkmsuf]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

He forgot lewd, lascivious, and salacious.

that comma is real and unspectacular

[MikeVic]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

He forgot lewd, lascivious, and saldanacious.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by NoMyths

The AP style book may accept confusion as a standard of doing business, but us hardliners certainly don't. The serial comma is something over which I've fought kind of hardcore in my editing and teaching. There are no disadvantages to using it, but all sorts of problems can crop up when it isn't used.

The AP dropping it probably has more to do with print costs (same reason for not having two spaces after a period in print -- saves ink and paper) than grammar.

Now when you go to the grocery store later please pick up food for dinner, bananas and cat food.

This doesn't occur enough for AP to care in today's computer based print world. We're not stuck using some massive space for a comma. It takes up very little room, and usually the text can be adjusted with today's computer graphic design technology. The spaces after period would be much more prevalent, though--I could see that.

No, I'm not saying their reason for doing so makes sense, whatever it is, but I am pretty sure it isn't space considerations.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by NoMyths

Now when you go to the grocery store later please pick up food for dinner, bananas and cat food.

Oh, and BTW, the comma is not always left out. In the case above or where clarity would become an issue, the comma is left in. Clarity in the writing is of the utmost importance to newspapers, as people who get confused reading their paper don't respond with, "I'll keep reading it until I get it," but with, "I'm going to stop reading this."

In actuality, BTW, the editor would almost certainly re-write the sentence altogether to make it more clear and avoid the situation completely.

[korme]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

"Sir, perhaps you'd be more comfortable at one of our lower-stakes tables."

We call him Double Down

[korme]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

...and I give thanks to my parents, God and Ayn Rand.

Devil's Advocate: To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

"Sir, perhaps you'd be more comfortable at one of our lower-stakes tables."

From the stupid questions category- what's with the vampire references? I must have missed something

SI

[korme]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

From the stupid questions category- what's with the vampire references? I must have missed something

SI

Vampire Weekend has a song titled "Oxford Comma" and the first line is "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?"

[cuervo72]

/has never heard of "Vampire Weekend" before Kurt's post in this thread

[kurtism]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

/has never heard of "Vampire Weekend" before Kurt's post in this thread

Cue it up, a very catchy little tune.

[wheels]

Originally Posted by NoMyths

The AP style book may accept confusion as a standard of doing business, but us hardliners certainly don't. The serial comma is something over which I've fought kind of hardcore in my editing and teaching. There are no disadvantages to using it, but all sorts of problems can crop up when it isn't used.

The AP dropping it probably has more to do with print costs (same reason for not having two spaces after a period in print -- saves ink and paper) than grammar.

For serial commas, the only real question is clarity. The comma merely serves as a separator of items in a series, and, most of the time, the final conjunction in a series provides the necessary punctuation: The American flag is red, white and blue. However, if there is the potential for confusion, then by all means the final comma should be inserted: I had orange juice, toast, and ham and eggs for breakfast. Here "ham and eggs" is considered singular, the ham and eggs are actually mixed together as one item.

Newspapers also dropped the end quotation marks at the end of a paragraph if the quote continued on in the next paragraph. It was deemed unnecessary because the quote marks began the next paragraph.

Double spaces after periods are a completely different issue. The only reason double spaces were ever used was because typewriter characters were monospaced, i.e. there was uniform space between words and letters. The space to the left and right of the letter "l" was the same as the space to the left and right of a much wider letter like "W." Typesetters felt it was necessary to insert an extra space character between sentences to avoid the text looking like one long sentence.

Current fonts used for typesetting have variable spacing between characters through kerning to account for this, and no double spaces are necessary between sentences. Double spaces just create twice as much space as the designer of the font deemed necessary.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by kurtism

Cue it up, a very catchy little tune.

Hmm...not bad. Had me thinking of Elvis Costello a bit.

[Galaril]

I am trying to find out if this is correct or not:

"marginally adverse effects" or seriously adverse effects"

[st.cronin]

I believe they have nearly opposite meanings. The first means slightly bad, the second means really bad.

[Galaril]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I believe they have nearly opposite meanings. The first means slightly bad, the second means really bad.

No, I got that. My worry explanation is confusing. My question wasn't about which of these was alright but instead seperately whether either was ok. I thought having the words marginally or seriously adverse effects sounded kind of bad.

[QuikSand]

Today, on public radio discussion of the latest chapter in Senator Obama's flap over Rev. Wright, we got treated to two pronunciations of the same word. From online searches, this seems to be yet another word where the previously-judged-incorrect pronunciation has won out and become the official, at least according to some sources.

Senator Obama, in rejecting some of Rev. Wright's statements, pronounced "divisive" with the short-i in the accented syllable, and then the NPR reporter shortly thereafter used the same word with the long-i.

This is (or at least was, unless the lazies have just won this one already) one of those tough words, where technically correct pronunciation (with the short-i) runs the risk of making you look, to varying audiences that include most people, either discouragingly ignorant or alarmingly effete. It's properly in the same class as some of the words I think we discussed in this thread earlier, like short-lived, forte, and perhaps others -- where even if you *know* the proper pronunciation, it might be wisest to play to the numbers and just dumb it down.

I suppose we can let history judge whether Senator Obama's decision (whether conscious or not) to stick with the highbrow pronunciation is a wise one, but I rather doubt that anyone truly believes that elections end up being decided by the tiny sliver of self-important intellectual snobs who pay attention to this sort of thing.

[Ksyrup]

This exchange between Jewel and Kurt Loder came up during a grammar discussion on another board. Funny as hell!



As you may know, Jewel wrote a book of poetry that was wildly popular--to the dismay of many English teachers, I'm sure.

Kurt Loder found some problems with it:

LODER: There's a line you have,'There are nightmares on the sidewalks/there are jokes on TV/ there are people selling thoughtlessness with such casualty.' Casualty doesn't mean that, does it? Casualty's like a guy gets his arm blown off. I mean isn't that...

JEWEL: That's a type of casualty.

LODER: What?

JEWEL: It's a type of casualty that ...

LODER: No, really. I thought you were trying to say casualness.

JEWEL: No, casualty.

LODER: Oh, OK. All right. Are you a tech person? Do you take computers on the road, do you log on, e-mail?

JEWEL: No, I'm a bit archaic. I mean, I still write everything by hand. It's quite archaic.

LODER: Wow.

JEWEL: It is wow. I'm dyslexic as heck. I mean, I just can't type well.

LODER: Really? That'd be a problem for a writer.

JEWEL: It is a bit of problem. I mean, putting the book together. Everything was done by hand. I had to recopy it legibly to get it...

LODER: That explains casualty probably.

[MJ4H]

What a prick. That usage is fine in an artistic sense as far as I'm concerned. I find it a creative way to fit her thoughts into the structure, personally. It isn't as if she was writing an essay or an article for Scientific American. Oh, wait, I mean Scientific American. I think.

[Ksyrup]

What? That is a real word with a distinct meaning that has nothing to do with what she was trying to convey!

[MJ4H]

I understand that. She used it instead of "casualness" because it fit the structure of the song. It's artistic license. Words don't have to always be used correctly and grammar doesn't always have to be perfect in art. It would be nice to know she knew what she was doing when she did it, in the sense that you need to know all of the rules and be aware you are breaking them when you do. But it is ok to break the rules in art.

[st.cronin]

Well, its not as if that's some unprecedented modification of one word type to another. Its clear what she means.

[Ksyrup]

I wouldn't have a problem with it if it didn't change the meaning of what she was trying to convey. And the fact that she has no clue just makes it that much worse. I've seen artists essentially make up words before, or add a little extra to a word to get it to fit a melody, so I know it happens. I've even seen it with grammar. Here's a good example from one of my favorite Jason Falkner songs:

Originality was never big on your list of things to be

But here, the change is to an existing word with its own meaning, AND she is clueless about it. I don't get any sense that she understands that casualty is not the same as casualness and made that choice consciously.

[MJ4H]

If she didn't know it was an alteration to the word, that is indeed a slight problem, but the evidence presented in that conversation isn't really enough to convince me of that. Making the alteration itself I am fine with and in fact think it is actually a touch clever. Nothing to get that worked up about, though, to me.

[rkmsuf]

Curt Loder is a turd.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by MattJones4Heisman

If she didn't know it was an alteration to the word, that is indeed a slight problem, but the evidence presented in that conversation isn't really enough to convince me of that. Making the alteration itself I am fine with and in fact think it is actually a touch clever. Nothing to get that worked up about, though, to me.

I'm not worked up about it, I just thought it was pretty funny because, unlike you, I think it's pretty clear she didn't understand what the word meant (or thought it meant casualness). She specifically said that she meant casualty and not casualness, and that getting an arm blown off is a "type of casualty." Either she means something entirely different than you and I think she does, or she's having a Paula Abdul moment.

[MJ4H]

Well Kurt Loder was sure worked up about it. And was being quite a dick about it. If he didn't have mannequin fingers shoved up his ass about the whole thing to begin with, he could've given her the benefit of the doubt and it never would've been brought up. It works as it is and is actually somewhat clever (imo). If she arrived at that accidentally, hell, some people are born with a horseshoe up their ass I guess.

[Maple Leafs]

Somebody wrote an article about us!
#99 Grammar « Stuff White People Like

[BishopMVP]

While helping a girl edit a paper I came across this sentence.

"The German invasion of Poland, combined with the second Sino-Japanese War, eventuated in World War II."

Ignoring the unnecessary commas, that word isn't real, right? It is listed on dictionary.com - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eventuated - and I understand the intent, so am I the one wrong here?

[MikeVic]

I'm going to use that word now.

[korme]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

Somebody wrote an article about us!
#99 Grammar « Stuff White People Like

I laughed many a time, because I am guilty of many of those things.

[st.cronin]

"He was always getting into trouble."
"He was always getting in trouble."
"He was always getting in to trouble."

Which is preferable?

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

Which is preferable?

The first rule of clear writing is to always use as few words as possible.

So in your case, you'd go with:
"Him = trouble"

[korme]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

"He was always getting into trouble."
"He was always getting in trouble."
"He was always getting in to trouble."

Which is preferable?

i'm picking 3

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

"He was always getting into trouble."
"He was always getting in trouble."
"He was always getting in to trouble."

Which is preferable?

I prefer #1. I have heard both the first and second used colloquially, and once a phrase takes on idiomatic status, grammar really no longer applies. I think #3 is simply incorrect.

[korme]

I'd argue that if you break it down "in to" seems most appropriate. Then again, that is just going off of instincts.