Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is likely just me, but I find sentences where the independent clause is bookended by an introductory and dependent clause to be inelegant. I never write them.
Can you give an example?
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A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#62The commas in the second Amendment and their meaning are probably worth Trillions of dollars. When you think of all the private arms and all the costs of gun violence in the US over the years which hinge on the individual right to bear arms, when punctuation in the second amendment can lead people to read the text as only holding a right to bear arms within a well-regulated Militia. Turns out that the commas weren’t…
The only way to misread the Second Amendment is to assume that it, alone among the other amendments in the original Bill of Rights, was written to constrain the people rather than the government.
In other words, you have to approach the question with an agenda -- and a conclusion -- already in mind. Bad for intellectual honesty regardless of how you feel about gun ownership rights.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#63Isn't the trailing comma at the end of lists (like Python, JavaScript, C#, and this sentence,) just an extension of the serial comma by one more step?
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The next day I enjoyed - pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce over rice - boccoli salad - bread pudding with chocolate sauce. There, I fixed it.
There's still ambiguity as to whether it's: (pan-roasted oysters) with (a tomato sauce over rice) or: (pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce) over rice
I don't think there is. It is the second. The clear convention is that each meal item is a list element.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#65> “The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce over rice, broccoli salad and bread pudding with chocolate sauce.” A comma after “broccoli salad” would have cleared the table before dessert. I think if you write a sentence that's highly dependent on the reader paying careful attention to where an easy-to-miss comma is, you assume all readers know what Oxford commas are, and the sentence generates a…
My two cents against the use of the Oxford comma would be that all of Europe's languages are written without it. Surely if neither German, nor Spanish, nor Finnish, nor Lithuanian, nor Hungarian, nor Bulgarian - if none of them need the Oxford comma, English probably doesn't either.
Without regard to the actual conclusion, I don't one should necessarily apply lessons learned in sensible languages to this abominable offspring of German and French that we, for some reason, use.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a big fan of em dashes, which—when used like this—signal a parenthetical remark.
Parentheses are way better than em-dashes for parenthetical remarks. A set of parentheses make the syntax unambiguous. An em-dash is “that multifaceted, all-purpose punctuation mark that can act as a parenthesis, comma, colon, semicolon or even quotation mark”. Also I have spent too much time with computer languages, and I personally find the lack of spacing around the parenthetical em-dash to be an ugly syntax. Then…
Functionally, I guess the only advantage that the em-dash has is that it fails loudly and miserably when nested. For example:
Parentheticals -- already a bad -- although sometimes unavoidable -- habit of mine -- should never be nested.
Completely incomprehensible.
Parentheticals (already a bad (although sometimes unavoidable) habit of mine) should never be nested.
Dangerously comprehensible.
However, em-dashes do make the reading voice in my head change over to an old-timey radio announcer so that is cool.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#67And the $2M comma issue from Canada https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-2-mil... And Rogers Won. http://www.slaw.ca/2007/08/22/rogers-wins-comma-contract-dis...
Language buffs take note -- Page 7 of the contract states: The agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party." Rogers' intent in 2002 was to lock into a long-term deal of at least five years. But when regulators with the Canadian Radio-television and…
Honestly, that's just ambiguous in general. The one year prior notice should specify that it is prior to each renewal.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't semicolons the correct english list separator?
That's another argument in itself. I was always taught that phrases set apart by semicolons need to be capable of standing alone as complete sentences, so it's jarring to see them used to delimit nouns or noun phrases in a list. At the same time, the language clearly needs a comma-like operator with higher precedence than the comma, and it's very hard to argue against pressing the semicolon into that role.
The semicolon is often used as a superlist separator, with commas used for the sublists.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#69The commas in the second Amendment and their meaning are probably worth Trillions of dollars. When you think of all the private arms and all the costs of gun violence in the US over the years which hinge on the individual right to bear arms, when punctuation in the second amendment can lead people to read the text as only holding a right to bear arms within a well-regulated Militia. Turns out that the commas weren’t…
The only way to misread the Second Amendment is to assume that it, alone among the other amendments in the original Bill of Rights, was written to constrain the people rather than the government. In other words, you have to approach the question with an agenda -- and a conclusion -- already in mind. Bad for intellectual honesty regardless of how you feel about gun ownership rights.
Which government? Two states still had established churches when the First Amendment took effect.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#70There is a classic programming joke where, to my eyes, the Oxford comma is a must:
"There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation, and off by one errors."
Without the comma it seems weird to me:
"There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation and off by one errors."