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Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

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Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#121

Post by hetman »

nemo wrote: post #111
eCa wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider though: To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God [1] Is the writer's mother Ayn Rand? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_comma#Creating_ambiguity

"To my mother, Ayn Rand and God" Remove the comma and their mother is both Ayn Rand and God. That's a really terrible example since the Oxford Comma actually works slightly better than the alternative since the problem there is the ambiguity created by the ordering, not the punctuation.

Because that conclusion would be nonsensical, that leaves the alternative that "Ayn Rand and God" are an entirely separate part of the sentence. At least for me, removing the Oxford comma made it much clearer that Ayn Rand was not the mother when reading the sentence. You're mileage may vary, but using nonsense interpretations seems odd for a sentence that is not meant to be read by a computer.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#122

Post by nemo »

hetman wrote: post #121
nemo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To my mother, Ayn Rand and God" Remove the comma and their mother is both Ayn Rand and God. That's a really terrible example since the Oxford Comma actually works slightly better than the alternative since the problem there is the ambiguity created by the ordering, not the punctuation.

Because that conclusion would be nonsensical, that leaves the alternative that "Ayn Rand and God" are an entirely separate part of the sentence. At least for me, removing the Oxford comma made it much clearer that Ayn Rand was not the mother when reading the sentence. You're mileage may vary, but using nonsense interpretations seems odd for a sentence that is not meant to be read by a computer.

It's odd that you're imagining that the concluding that the person's mother is Ayn Rand and they are dedicating a book to God is a sensible reading. Having known some Randoids the non-Oxford form's interpretation actually seems more plausible to me, but the sentence is nonsensical whatever punctuation you use and neither form seems any less nonsensical to me.

If that's the best case they have against the Oxford comma it seems to be an exception that proves the rule.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#123

Post by teamonkey »

anigbrowl wrote: post #117
teamonkey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pace of the sentence is accelerating, launching into the remainder of the sentence. Momentum - 3 syllables Syncopation - 4 syllables Rhythm and pattern - 5 syllables

That's true, but that's also why it doesn't work. Think about the stress patterns that actually constitute rhythm: momENtum, SYNcoPATion, RHYthm and PATtern ___--___ ---__---___ ---___ ___ ---____ Nonomatapoeia, I fear.

I 'hear' only one stress in each.

moMENtum [beat] syncoPATion [beat] rhythm-and-PATtern [no beat so continues straight on]

And all three patterns, including the beat, take the same time, with the remainder of the sentence continuing at the same speed as PATtern.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#124

Post by aniro »

snowwrestler wrote: post #88

I 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 possi…

I am guessing that Cormac McCarthy would give you fits.

There are times when you should absolutely throw out the rules.

The purpose of language is to communicate. More often than not, sticking to the rules enables more effective communication. But sometimes, not so much.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#125

Post by aniro »

snowwrestler wrote: post #88

I 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 possi…

I am guessing that Cormac McCarthy would give you fits.

There are times when you should absolutely throw out the rules.

The purpose of language is to communicate. More often than not, sticking to the rules enables more effective communication. But sometimes, not so much.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#126

Post by ghaff »

nightpool wrote: post #83
ghaff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point I took from that quote was that many punctuation rules come about to address difficult to parse situations. My point is that, if it's a difficult to parse situation, you should probably rewrite it in some way so that punctuation isn't so critical to understanding.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#127

Post by baddox »

andolanra wrote: post #52
SheepSlapper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the Oxford comma, because it leaves no room for ambiguity. I've heard anecdotes of people omitting the comma in contracts and having it come back to bite them in the butt... but who knows if there's any truth in them or not.

Except that the Oxford comma does leave room for ambiguity, c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_comma#Creating_ambiguity Frankly, with writing in natural languages, hard-and-fast rules like, "Oxford Comma are always unambiguous," and, "Always avoid passives," tend to make your writing weaker, because there are still some cases in which Oxford Commas are ambiguous and passives are the right tool for the job. What…

That example is horrible.

> Without a serial comma, the above dedication would read: To my mother, Ayn Rand and God, a phrase ambiguous only if the reader accepts the interpretation my mother, who is both Ayn Rand and God.

That's exactly the same grammatical interpretation (i.e. the comma indicates an appositive) that was suggested to be ambiguous with the Oxford comma present.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#129

Post by lhgaghl »

cpt1138 wrote: post #35
cinfinity wrote: post #5

Stopped reading after footnote 2.

I did too. Couldn't figure out why that was even in there. It seemed so ludicrously out of place but so intentional.

I stupidly ignored my instinct to stop at that point.

> It seemed so ludicrously out of place but so intentional.

This so much. The first half of the footnote is trying to make him and his friend sound intellectual. The next half looks like he started asking himself philosophically whether he would do the same as the teacher and whether it's okay, and just started writing while he thought about it and posted it. Then he ends with something intentionally stupid-sounding to be like ok nevermind all that, but why didn't he just delete the second half?

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#130

Post by saraid216 »

gregoire wrote: post #96

This article makes me think about a question to which I still haven't found an answer: For me (I'm not a native english speaker by the way), when reading out loud a text, all commas are "translated" by a pause. But there are some sentences for which I don't understand why a comma is used, as I wouldn't pause at the comma when saying these sentences out loud. For example: > The problem is that many people have horribl…

When I see a sentence that ends with ", too", I tend to place a bit more emphasis on the second-to-last word ("speaking", in this case), which ends up adding a pause.

So the sentence goes, "The problem is that many people have horrible rhythm while speaking, too."

To my taste, the sentence goes on a bit too long: an emphasis probably belongs somewhere in the middle: but perfection is hard to come by. :P

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