Is it just me, or does this guy sound a little like James Mickens, the hilarious Microsoft blogger? http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2013/12/24/10484...
Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
81–90 of 162 posts
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#82> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea. I am more than happy to truly believe this premise (and if you read some of the things I write, and how I use punctuation, I hope the reader will agree ;P), and can come up with situations where the extra comma "breaks the rythm" and cases where it "makes the sentence". > Momentum, syncopa…
The Right Way (IMHO): Momentum, syncopation, rhythm-and-pattern: these make a sentence flow, because...
or perhaps:
explanation-for ((make-sentence-flow) (momentum, syncopation, rhythm-and-pattern)) (...)Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author addresses this: "contrived sentences that mean different things depending on the placement of commas, because this tactic was so successful in fixing that thing that time."
Yes but contrived sentences are bad examples. If you have to carefully parse a sentence's punctuation to come to the correct meaning, the sentence should be rewritten. (Analogous to forcing code maintainers to remember obscure precedence rules to understand your code.)
I'm not sure what you're point is, becauae on first read it looks like you're agreeing with me? The whole point of the quote was that contrived sentences aren't good examples.
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#84> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea.
This is simply a run-on, not a use of an Oxford comma as I understand it. And these bother me a lot.
"An oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice"
is a grammatically complete sentence. So is
"it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea."
Separate them by a strong punctuation mark. If you want the rhythm of a comma, separate them by a semi-colon in preference to a stop. Semi-colons are made for this.
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#85> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea. This is simply a run-on, not a use of an Oxford comma as I understand it. And these bother me a lot. "An oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice" is a grammatically complete sentence. So is "it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea." Separate them…
Several people in this thread are claiming that punctuation is used to convey information about how to pronounce the sentence.
You're saying (and I tend to agree with you) that written punctuation is about meaning, and not about where a speaker would pause to take a breath.
Can these two be kludged into a unified meaning? "Write better so that your written words sound good when spoken"?
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#86> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea. This is simply a run-on, not a use of an Oxford comma as I understand it. And these bother me a lot. "An oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice" is a grammatically complete sentence. So is "it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea." Separate them…
Several people in this thread are claiming that punctuation is used to convey information about how to pronounce the sentence. You're saying (and I tend to agree with you) that written punctuation is about meaning, and not about where a speaker would pause to take a breath. Can these two be kludged into a unified meaning? "Write better so that your written words sound good when spoken"?
I'm saying that punctuation has already solved this problem with the semi-colon. If you have two sentences where the second follows the other so closely that there is barely a breath in between, use a semi-colon rather than a stop. You convey both meaning and flow at the same time, and you keep the grammaticasters happy.
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without the commas, it sounds to me like the author is excited and animated about his topic, tumbling forward. I imagine him gesticulating wildly. I guess you were imagining more of a measured pronouncement, with paused emphasis to cause us to carefully consider each element. As he says, the punctuation imparts different styles. I think the tumbling-forward interpretation works better with the list having four elemen…
I've read that sentence a few times now both imposing and not imposing the imaginary comma in my head and it still sounds like either a mistake or a particularly weird choice of rhythm. Without an oxford comma, a four letter list sounds like "This...that...c and d do that!" -- which in turn sounds like naming two things, then making a completely different sentence about the final two things. People don't talk that wa…
>Without an oxford comma, a four letter list sounds like "This...that...c and d do that!"
It sounds more like: bit, bat, bot and bet do that to my ears. E.g the list flows in a continuous motion, and the "and" just denotes the last item ("and finally"), something like x:xs in Haskell but in reverse! "this, that, c : d do that"
>which in turn sounds like naming two things, then making a completely different sentence about the final two things.
This sounds like a projection, not from the sound of the phrase, but from your a priori idea about what the oxford comma would do there (e.g that it would evenly split the items of the list).
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#88I understand punctuation fine, and I think the author is wrong. While commas in general are not governed by hard rules, the "Oxford comma" is an extremely specific use of the comma: to separate the listing of 3 or more equal items. There's nothing artistic about it; it's exactly the sort of situation that simply needs to be consistent to be readable.
No offense to the author, who might be reading this, but it's possible to be too proud of your writing history and cleverness. Many people have had English teachers they loved, and any good writer has had a moment where they realized, or were told, to throw out the rules.
It's essential to note that these moments always come in high school or college or later, when kids already have more than a decade of writing instruction under their belts. No one tells a second-grader to throw out all the rules.
Because you're not actually supposed to throw them out. It's just a teaching technique to break through bad writing habits.
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#89> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea. I am more than happy to truly believe this premise (and if you read some of the things I write, and how I use punctuation, I hope the reader will agree ;P), and can come up with situations where the extra comma "breaks the rythm" and cases where it "makes the sentence". > Momentum, syncopa…
[deleted]
Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.
#90Most of the time, you can use the Oxford comma, the non-Oxford comma or any other kind of comma, and it just doesn't make any difference. But sometimes you need it. Here's an example: "There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things, cache expiration, and off-by-one errors." Take out the comma and you ruin the joke - at least to my ears: "There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things,…
The author addresses this: "contrived sentences that mean different things depending on the placement of commas, because this tactic was so successful in fixing that thing that time."
The author conveniently dismisses sentences that contradict his premise as "contrived." That's not addressing anything, it's just employing the No True Scotsman trick.