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Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

stilldrinking.org

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Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#111

Post by nemo »

eCa wrote: post #22
marmarlade wrote: post #17

I was never taught about the Oxford Comma (I'm not a native speaker), but trained myself to use it consistently after seeing this http://jaced.com/blogpix/2013/washingtonlincolnoxford.jpg . This has made me rethink though - he makes a great point that writing is about transferring the voices in my head into the readers', so I'll keep that in mind for any creative writing. Heck, not just creative writing, I can think…

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.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#112

Post by ssully »

30thElement wrote: post #77
centro wrote: post #59

I found this in the source of the page. The script also called a ruby script to send him a tweet which another script was probably monitoring to text his phone so he could screenshot the text and post to facebook via instagram. I think the "millenials" - who should be referred to as generation byte - get undeserved flak, as all generations do, for being younger and prettier and living in a different world. But this k…

If that's what made him your favorite, you really need to read his earlier post that really blew up in popularity. It's a great read. http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

That just made my Sunday night. Another perk is it seems friendly enough to show non-programmers, but I dont think they will appreciate it as much.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#113

Post by resu_nimda »

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…

There's nothing artistic about it; it's exactly the sort of situation that simply needs to be consistent to be readable.

Is this written in the stars somewhere? This is exactly the kind of prescriptivism the author is arguing against. If you fall more towards that side of the spectrum, that's fine, but don't believe you're somehow more factually correct. Your interpretations of consistency and readability are not universal.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#114

Post by shittyanalogy »

Sure, the oxford comma is not important unless it is disambiguating. But let's go meta and ask, Why do you care so much that people care? It's not like great or even good writers are getting hung up on whether or not to use the oxford comma. It's not like people loose jobs over the oxford comma.

Everyone with half a brain knows those rules are guidelines. Just like how you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition at. This post is the long form, literary version of feeding the trolls.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#115

Post by peterashford »

I enjoyed this essay immensely. I'm a bit of a pedant and a language geek (I have a collection of favourite archaisms!) but my favourite saying about our language is:

"English is a juggernaut truck: it goes on regardless"

I find it useful to say that to myself when I encounter some of the net's more egregious assaults on the language. It's not an assault, it's the language doing what it does.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#116

Post by saurik »

lmkg wrote: post #18
saurik wrote: post #2

> 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…

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 would argue the premise of this article is invalidated if you think you can "rush" through a comma; that, in fact, argues the opposite: that the punctuation is more of a syntactic guide to the form of the sentence and is often irrelevant to the way it should be interpreted for spacing, pause, meter, and verse (<- "spacing/pause, meter and verse" there sounds great, but "spacing, pause, meter-and-verse" is lopsided; and it would be made all the worse if I had the sentence continue after "verse" in a "rushed" fasion after forcing the pause with the comma after "spacing" and "pause").

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#117

Post by anigbrowl »

teamonkey wrote: post #94
YokoZar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#118

Post by hetman »

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…

Some sentences are down right unreadable without the Oxford comma, and others make perfect sense. I agree with the author that it's not always so cut and dry; we're not communicating with a computer after all ;)

Excellent point about rule breaking though. You really can't start breaking the rules until you've learned them first. To be sure, some will learn them implicitly, but the rules aren't there to suck the soul out of an activity. They're there to give structure for people who would otherwise have no idea what they're doing.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#119

Post by Tloewald »

As with most art forms, the key is to learn the rules and then how to break them. Caring about minutiae like Oxford commas matters to people who know the rules including many who don't know when to break them, but pedants who cling to rules beyond their point of uselessness don't make the rules not worth understanding.

Re: Nobody. Understands. Punctuation.

#120

Post by Spooky23 »

eCa wrote: post #22
marmarlade wrote: post #17

I was never taught about the Oxford Comma (I'm not a native speaker), but trained myself to use it consistently after seeing this http://jaced.com/blogpix/2013/washingtonlincolnoxford.jpg . This has made me rethink though - he makes a great point that writing is about transferring the voices in my head into the readers', so I'll keep that in mind for any creative writing. Heck, not just creative writing, I can think…

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

The writer chose to construct that list in a confusing & ambiguous way.

You could say "To Ayn Rand, God, and my mother" and lose the ambiguity.

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