Lapsing into a Comma
by Tom Neven on 09/25/2008 at 3:47 PM
I can't believe I missed an important holiday yesterday: National Punctuation Day. I missed the joy of celebrating the semicolon, congratulating the colon, exclaiming against the exclamation mark, and emphasizing the proper use of the em dash.
I know, it sounds like a crashing bore to a lot of people. But I've spent a large part of my 20-plus years in journalism as a copy editor. The copy editor is a nitpicker, a language curmudgeon. His motto: Go ahead and call me anal-retentive — just make sure you hyphenate it.
He's the guy who agonizes over punctuation, the guy who knows the difference between immanent and imminent and brazier and brassiere. (And those aren't arbitrary examples: twice in the past month I’ve seen those words mixed up in print, resulting in hilarious unintended meanings.) He's the guy who knows that a viscous criminal is no threat, but a vicious one is. He's the unsung hero who makes other writers look good — and usually kills without mercy hoary clichés such as "unsung hero."
So what's the big deal? Well, a misplaced comma in a contract cost a Canadian company $2.13 million. The Strategic Arms Limitations Talks between the Soviet Union and the United States were held up for weeks over a comma — basically, whether a definition of a certain weapons systems was restrictive or nonrestrictive. (To our shame, the Russian-speaking negotiators understood the distinction in English better than the Americans did.)
It's especially perilous to write about the importance of punctuation and mess up in the process, as one hapless PR person recently did. And an incorrectly punctuated love letter could get you in serious trouble.
A few of my peeves, pet or otherwise:
The mistaken belief that quotation marks add emphasis to a word: No, quotation marks are used to indicate quoted material, to introduce an unfamiliar term, or to indicate ironic usage.
Right: Mayor Jones was seen in town with his beautiful wife.
Wrong: Mayor Jones was seen in town with his "beautiful" wife.
An overuse of em dashes: The em dash is a useful piece of punctuation, but it is not interchangeable with commas or parentheses. In fact, I see way too many writers who seem to have set their em-dash function on random — not that they notice.
The improper use of semicolons: Like the em dash, the semicolon is a useful tool when used correctly. Unfortunately, it's often used incorrectly or not used where it should be. The proper use of the semicolon indicates a subtlety of thought and an elegance of expression. In fact, during the Son of Sam murder spree in the late '70s, some speculated that the murderer must be a writer because of his proper use of semicolons in the taunting notes he sent to police. Newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin famously said, "He's the only murderer I know who can wield a semicolon as well as he can a revolver."
Some have mocked the semicolon. Kurt Vonnegut once told a university audience that "all [semicolons] do is show that you've been to college." And New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's favorite put-down for overeducated bureaucrats was "semicolon boy." Mock if you must, but the semicolon is really more like an obscure implement in your toolbox; you might not use it often, but it’s the perfect tool when you need it.
I could go on, but we're allowed only a certain number of words per post. If you enjoy the nitty-gritty of grammar and punctuation or want to know what all the fuss is about, I highly recommend Lynne Truss' wonderful book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. (Her book will explain why I didn't set off the title with commas.)
If you want to improve your grammar and punctuation, there's always the indispensable The Elements of Style or its droll and useful follow-up, The Elephants of Style by fellow copy editor Bill Walsh. Hat tip also to Bill for the title to this post. (I profiled Bill for Writer's Digest several years ago.) Two other books I find useful are Fowler’s Modern English Usage and Modern American Usage. (Both books are out of print but can be found on eBay and other sites.)
1. Bethany said the following at 3:58 PM on Sep 25:
In fact, I see way too man writers....
Really? Not way too woman writers? ;-)
2. Heather Koerner said the following at 4:15 PM on Sep 25:
"In fact, I see way too many writers who seem to have set their em-dash function on random — not that they notice."
Umm... yeah... guilty. Or is that
Umm, yeah, guilty? Or
Umm -- yeah -- guilty?
3. Nickolina said the following at 4:49 PM on Sep 25:
"guilty as charged"--I see the spelling before I see the punctuation.
4. Janelle said the following at 5:16 PM on Sep 25:
Thanks for this, Tom! "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" is quite possibly one of the funniest books I've read in years.
In high school, I was the editor of the school newspaper for a year. While I secretly loved editing copy, the rest of the staff not-so-secretly loathed me and my red pen.
Here is a question for you (this being an area in which you excel): how do you write correctly yet keep from sounding pretentious?
Case in point: I just reworded that aside to keep the preposition in the middle. Can I write popular e-mails without lowering my grammatical standards?
5. Nicole (from Boston) said the following at 5:33 PM on Sep 25:
*wipes a tear from eye*
Every time I see someone as passionate about grammar as I am, I just get so happy. Lynne Truss would be proud.
6. Reid said the following at 5:45 PM on Sep 25:
Don't leave me hanging. Why is there no comma before the title?
As I read it, the title is an additional (unessential) descriptive phrase for the word "book". It's similar to "let me introduce you to my old dog, Spot". It's dissimilar to merely following a noun with an adjective, as in "trip the light fantastic".
Or is the comma unneeded because the title is dependent/restrictive to "book"?
7. Josh said the following at 5:53 PM on Sep 25:
Any love for "On Writing Well"?
8. Leah said the following at 6:19 PM on Sep 25:
THAT'S SO ME.
While I have never worked as a journalist, I did a journalism degree and throughout high school (and primary) I was very good at English. (The only thing that pulled my marks down were those stupid subjective things; like prose and rubbish).
I would love to work as a copy-editor except for the fact you have to work your way up to it and be the wrench monkey first... no thanks. I know some of the things journalists have to do and I'm really not interested. (More interested in the PR side of things).
I am a self-confessed grammar nazi. My pet peeve is the misuse of apostrophes.
You know, like when people write CD's, 1000's, the 1960's as a plural. (NO people, if it's a plural it DOESN'T need an apostrophe!)
Or if someone writes "there" when they mean "they're". Or "your" when they mean "you're". What baffles me even more is when people write "you're" but mean "your"!! As in, that's you're car, isn't it?
At that point, my head begins to implode.
Another one that gets on my nerves is when people write "it's" for the possessive use (when it should be "its"). What annoys me even more is when I correct it and someone tries to tell me "but no, you use apostrophes for possession". Then I point them to words like "theirs", "ours", "yours". No apostrophes there!
I saw a truly horrible mistake in a newspaper once. Not a misuse of an apostrophe- just the wrong homonym. It was an article about three Korean cyclists riding up the east coast of Australia. The article said something like "the three road from Sydney to Cairns". I blinked, confused. Obviously, they'd missed the 's' off "roads". But what did this have to do with three roads?
I re-read the paragraph four times, I kid you not. That's when I realised it should have been "the three rode from Sydney to Cairns". My mouth actually dropped open in amazement.
a) How did the journalist even do that?
b) How did the copy editor not pick it up?!
9. Kim said the following at 7:12 PM on Sep 25:
Well Tom, I did find your post very interesting. I don't know a lot about grammar, but it does seem useful.
In my opinion, semicolons should not be reserved for college material. With 13 years of schooling prior to college, and 6 years of dedicated English within those 13, I think they could have found the time to teach us proper grammar. I don't know what others' experiences have been, but I've always felt gypped by my English classes. My only memory of learning grammar is of fourth grade, when we actually had a textbook and had to evaluate and perhaps copy sentences. Every other class since then has offered a reminder of what the major parts of speech are (verb, adjective, etc.), but nothing else. The one exception would be some discussions of comma usage in ninth grade.
I went to high school in New York State, which has a lot of regulations for teaching. The Regents exams are supposed to make certain that all teachers uphold a minimum standard. This standard does not seem to include grammar. Most classes were spent reading books and answering questions to evaluate our reading comprehension. I suppose some level of grammatical proficiency is gained through reading, but why don't they teach it specifically?
Am I the only one who has had this frustrating educational experience?
10. Amelia said the following at 7:29 PM on Sep 25:
Does anyone else make a point of using correct punctuation when writing a text message? I know I do.
Not punctuation, but in a similar vein - my husband and I enjoy the incorrect use of the word 'literally'. As in, "[That sportsperson] is literally on fire!", or, "[The singer from Aerosmith] literally has vocal folds of steel". Both real examples, the first from a commentator and the second from a medical professional who was a guest lecturer for one of my classes. Hilarious.
11. erin said the following at 8:49 PM on Sep 25:
Ah, a post after my own heart! I love Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
I wish I had known about National Punctuation Day, but I didn't hear about it until late last night. I could have made mention of it in class. (I teach freshman composition, so it would have been relevant.) I'm definitely going to use that article about the $2.13 million comma to show that grammar is still important.
I personally believe that text messaging has had a very detrimental effect on writing. I actually had TWO different students spell "you" in their papers as "u." Sigh.
12. Jarod said the following at 9:22 PM on Sep 25:
Canada has made Boundless!! It's about time!!
13. Miranda said the following at 9:53 PM on Sep 25:
Your post just made a high school English teacher very happy. :)
14. Brendt said the following at 6:34 AM on Sep 26:
Everyones' afraid to comment -- on this post -- because, theyr'e afraid that they will "punctuate" it wrong; but I, know better!
15. Dan Gill said the following at 7:28 AM on Sep 26:
I had a fiction teacher who used to mark all semicolons with a big red circle. His thought was that virtually all sentences with a semicolon would be stronger as two sentences. He won me over.
The Canadian contract story is hilarious.
By the way, I think it's more important for a woman to know the difference between a brazier and a brassiere.
16. Jen from CO said the following at 9:28 AM on Sep 26:
If I'm allowed to play favourites, I do think you would be my pick of Boundless bloggers.
For a period of life (hah! A pun!), I was enamoured with commas. Then I grew out of the high-school phase and moved on to an affair with parentheses. But I've always revered the semi-colon. Such simple power it wields.
Improper punction does hurt. I find I'm perpetually perplexed by the oft misuse of apostrophes.
Then again, I am no one to speak, because my creative thinking generally overcomes my feeble attempts at proper grammar. But, to a writer's mindset, isn't that what lovely and dearly treasured copy-editors are for?
Props for mentioning the Lynne Truss book. It's a delight. I also recommend her follow-up, Talk To The Hand. It has nothing to do with punctuation and instead focuses on manners. Although, if one really thinks about it, the proper use of manners in society is like the proper use of punctuation -- something so subtle, but makes a huge difference as to how seriously one takes a document. Or a person.
But perhaps I'm reaching.
17. Tami said the following at 10:01 AM on Sep 26:
Hmm. I learned that the hyphen only goes between the words when they are used as an adjective directly preceding the noun. For example: "self-controlled woman" OR "woman who is self controlled" BUT NEVER "dearly-beloved wife" (no hyphens after adverbs).
Let the game's begin!
;)
18. Jo said the following at 10:44 AM on Sep 26:
1) I normally don't reveal my surname here but since you mention it...
"the guy who knows the difference between... brazier and brassiere"
To my teenage embarrassment, I knew WAY too many supply teachers who did NOT know the difference between these words.
And 2) What's an em-dash???
19. J. Tucker said the following at 12:04 PM on Sep 26:
Tom, thanks for the post. I love talking about grammar, because I'm a big, geeky nerd.
What's your take on the Oxford comma debate?
20. Tom Neven said the following at 12:09 PM on Sep 26:
Reid (#6)
You're on the right track. The reason I didn't set off the title of Truss' book with commas is because she has published more than one book. The title of the book then becomes essential information to distinguish which one I'm talking about. Essential elements are not set off by commas.
Take your situation with your dog. If you have only one dog and his name is Spot, you can says, "I love my dog," and we have all the information we need. Adding his name, Spot, is nice-to-have info, but not essential, so as a nonessential element it is set off with a comma.
But if you have two dogs, Spot and Stripe, and you just say, "I love my dog [singular]," we don't know which one you're talking about. We need his name, so to say "I love my dog Spot [no comma]" is correct.
Do you see the difference?
By the way, all those people who say, "My wife Mary loves to shop" are secretly admitting to being polygamists! ;-)
21. Loris said the following at 12:10 PM on Sep 26:
Misused apostrophes drive me crazy. My last name ends with an s. I was recently outraged when my taekwondo master made out my attendance card to say "Loris ____'s. Grrrrr.
22. Tom Neven said the following at 12:11 PM on Sep 26:
Josh (#7)
Yes, I highly recommend On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
23. Dan Gill said the following at 2:10 PM on Sep 26:
Janelle (#4)
Don't worry so much about ending a sentence in a preposition. It's bad form to end a sentence in an unnecessary preposition, for example, "Where are you going to?" Otherwise it is not a grammatical error. It's looked down on in scholarly work, but that is only the result of too many English teachers who forbade the practice.
Remember Winston Churchill's reply to an amateur grammarian who corrected him for that practice: "That is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I shall not put."
24. Edith said the following at 4:31 PM on Sep 26:
I loved this post! I had some friends call me the "grammar gestapo" in high school, when I actually learned grammar in my English class and was correcting everyone all the time. I still try to be accurate, but alas, in everyday speech and e-mail writing I do suffer lapses of style.
The em-dash and semicolon are two of my pet punctuation marks, and while writing my doctoral thesis, I used both marks quite frequently. My thesis adviser (yes, with an "e"!) excised a number of the dashes, so I tried to reconstruct the sentences with semicolons. But another professor was (not literally) death on the semicolons, preferring two short sentences instead. I got the idea and tried to use a healthy variety of sentence length—which was difficult, as I think I inherited severe "semicolophilia" (?!) from my mother.
One punctuation mark I wonder about is the colon: how does one use it elegantly in a context other than this sentence exemplifies?
Leah (#8): I plead guilty to the misuse of apostrophes for plurals such as you cited. Thanks for the correction! However, your rule does not hold universally: a's, b's, c's, . . . and B.A.'s, M.S.'s, Ph.D.'s are correct forms.
Loris (#21): My last name, too, ends with an s, and it drives me crazy when people form the possessive WITHOUT the s after the apostrophe (as my mother does). According to the very first rule in "The Elements of Style," all words have their possessive formed by adding 's. "Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as 'for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake." Sorry about that.
25. Sasha said the following at 7:16 PM on Sep 26:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a great book. As a grammar nerd, I appreciated it a lot. Her second book, Talk to the Hand, is also a great read....she has some fascinating insights into modern culture mixed in with all the humor!
26. Andy C said the following at 9:32 PM on Sep 26:
Tom (#20)
I would hope if you had two dogs, you would love them both and use the plural, eliminating the need to name either.
27. Sasha said the following at 11:02 PM on Sep 27:
I saw a great one today outside a cafe:
Try our "fresh" brewed iced tea!
I had to smile. :)
28. Rachel S. said the following at 1:55 PM on Sep 28:
Kim (#9),
You are definitely not the only person here to be frustrated by the lack of grammar being taught in the American high schools. As someone who will soon be teaching a foreign language at the university level, it is extremely frustrating to have to spend the first few classes teaching the students the basics of grammar, e.g. "What is a direct object?" Ugh.
29. Tigger said the following at 9:11 AM on Sep 29:
One of my pet peeves is seeing 'grammar' spelled 'grammer'. *Sigh.*
As editor-in-chief of my college newspaper I was only one of two people on staff who could identify a semi-colon, let alone use it correctly. My editors hated when I edited their writing - I could spot two spaces between words or explain why they had to place the apostrophe after the S in a possessive.
Though punctuation was drilled into my head as a child in school I didn't learn about grammar until I trained to be an ESL teacher. I've never understood how we expect students to grasp foreign languages without having a basic ability to identify sentence parts and structure of the native tongue. My own learning of Spanish and French has shot forward 50% since knowing how to correspond grammatical terms to English.
As for the Oxford comma -- I'm a die-hard. There has, is, and always should be a comma before the conjunction to eliminate confusion. To have discussion on the topic seems silly, as it is better to be as clear as possible. So why not put it there in the first place?
This is perhaps the most scrutinized post I've ever posted. Had to get the grammar right!
30. Amanda said the following at 10:57 AM on Sep 29:
Leah #8,
Numbers and letters are made plural by adding apostrophe s. Whether CD is considered a word, I don't know. If it is a word, then you would only add s. However, if you are talking about grades on a report card or something, then you would say "I made all C's and D's on my report card."
By the way, the word snuck is never correct. You should use sneaked or have/has sneaked. :)
31. Christina (in green) said the following at 10:59 AM on Sep 29:
Kim (#9),
The only time (ONLY time) I ever learned grammar was when I was homeschooled through middle school. And it wasn't something my mother was originally teaching me...
After I finished my math, science, history, and reading assignment before noon, my mother added dictation and grammar to the daily school routine.
I'm kinda grateful to her for that, but High school was woefully neglectful on the grammar side of things...and college wasn't so helpful, either. I rarely even WROTE in High School - the majority of our grade came from argument, organization, and content ... never from grammar.
And then I got to college...and boy was that a rude awakening. I had some of the most interesting and original papers (according to the professor) but I always got poor grades due to grammar.
And you'd never believe I was the only middle schooler in the state of florida to get a perfect score on a grammar test.
32. Leah said the following at 5:57 PM on Sep 30:
Edith said a's, b's, c's, . . . and B.A.'s, M.S.'s, Ph.D.'s are correct forms.
When it comes to abbreviations like BA, MS, PhD, there should *not* be an apostrophe. (And in regards to Amanda, too): I'm dubious about letters and numbers, but won't make a call on it because I'm not positive. I know for a fact that things like "in the 1960s" or "there were 1000s of ants" do NOT have apostrophes.
Can you show me some sort of resource that says there SHOULD be an apostrophe after letters or numbers when denoting a plural? Because frankly, I don't believe it at the moment.
Have a look at www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk
Or that could just be another random English rule made up by you Americans :P
33. Ted Slater said the following at 9:04 AM on Oct 1:
Leah (#32) -- different style guides provide different rules. I primarily defer to the AP Stylebook, which affirms Edith's contention that plurals of a single letter (e.g., "mind your p's and q's" or "he earned four A's and two B's") require an apostrophe. It's in the Punctuation Guide section of the book.
The AP Stylebook also has the abbreviation of "master's degree" as "M.A." -- with periods after each letter.
The AP Stylebook supports your other contentions (1000s of ants, the 1960s, etc.).
Different style guides are associated with different types of publications (newspapers, magazines, books, etc.) and different audiences (U.S., Canada, Europe, etc.). Rules are not absolute, and change from place to place, medium to medium....
34. Tami said the following at 9:51 AM on Oct 1:
Good point, Ted.
The key to copyediting is consistency. That's why, in addition to style guides (Chicago, AP, APA...), copyeditors will generally create style sheets for each project, so that they ensure the whole work is consistent. This mostly happens in the case of larger projects, such as books.
Additionally, most publications will have house style sheets. Each article is checked against the manual of choice as well as the house style. This helps the publication be consistent in its use of particular names and terms that don't necessarily appear in the manual.
35. Leah said the following at 7:24 PM on Oct 2:
Ted- oh, I wasn't disagreeing with the use of full-stops (or periods for you americans!) in some abbreviations, like Ph.D or M.A. I was questioning putting an apostrophe between that and an 's' for the plural.
I'd be ready to agree that single letters or numbers should have apostrophes- I found a reference to the AP style guide the other day too- but if it's any more than a single one and is something more than just a letter or number (for example, 1960s is not just a number, but the name of an era, and CD is not just a letter, but the name of an object) then the apostrophe is not required :)
And regarding what Tami said... yes, I'm certainly familiar with stylesheets! Having done journalism at uni, we had to use them for our assignments...
36. Tara said the following at 8:14 AM on Oct 4:
Oh I should send you a copy of one of my sister's emails. They're so very painful for me to read! Misplaced commas, apostrophies, elipsis, agg!
(My apologies if I've done that wrong!)
37. Karen said the following at 4:12 PM on Oct 4:
Oh, my word, but that was one funny post! I plead guilty to overuse of the em-dash, but I am a stickler for an apostrophe. I routinely take pictures of incorrect usages and post them on my blog. The most recent was a sign in a store window that read, "We except debit, credit, and cash." I stopped in my tracks and took a picture with my cell phone while people looked at me as if I were a three-headed frog. I just couldn't pass it up.
38. Tami said the following at 10:05 AM on Oct 6:
Hee hee hee, Karen; I would do likewise.
I remember visiting a popular cafe that is right next door to a local independent bookshop patronized by local aspiring writers, lit fans, and prep-school kids. The cafe had posted a sign that was RIFE with typos and grammatical errors. Someone *copyedited* it (with the "real" marks) and wrote something like, "PLEASE USE CORRECT GRAMMAR!" :)
39. GrammarQueen said the following at 12:13 PM on Oct 6:
@ Amanda (comment 30):
The word CD is an initialism: to pronounce the word, one pronounces each letter individually: see dee. Thus forming the plural merely requires adding an s: CDs.
Of course, after my in-house style manual, I refer next to The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition, whereas the Boundless crew adhere first to AP style.
@ Tom Neven (comment 20):
You did leave out the closing comma after the book title in the last paragraph of your original post. The sentence should be this:
If you want to improve your grammar and punctuation, there's always the indispensable The Elements of Style or its droll and useful follow-up, The Elephants of Style, by fellow copy editor Bill Walsh. (In this case The Elephants of Style functions as an appositive to follow-up.) =D
I'm lovin' this part of your comment, by the way:
By the way, all those people who say, "My wife Mary loves to shop" are secretly admitting to being polygamists! ;-)
Thank you for dedicating an entire post to punctuation, spelling, and grammar. You have warmed the cockles of my heart!!
Much love to all from this copy editor!
=)
40. Dean Peters said the following at 4:52 PM on Oct 6:
Note to self, cite this blog on my own sometime reaaaal soon ...
... preferably before I lapse into a coma over a comma.
41. NathanA said the following at 12:26 AM on Sep 29:
Take time to celebrate National Punctuation Day. It seems that National Punctuation Day would be a holiday that will make the respective buildings containing the home offices of Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter on fire, because hardly anybody on those respective websites seems to know what punctuation, or grammar is. It's a fake holiday, like so many other holidays are, but this one at least highlights something concrete, but also a growing problem in that a growing number of adults are functionally illiterate, and people are learning the majority of their written communication skills with text messaging. Maybe a personal loan to celebrate National Punctuation Day would be worth it.
42. Andrea-Elena said the following at 9:45 AM on Sep 29:
Took me a moment to realize that GrammarQueen's comment was mine! Hah!
Janelle (#4): The "Never end a sentence with a preposition" rule came to us via Latin. It's really not necessary in English. And ending a sentence with a preposition is far more preferable than contorting one's syntax into a pretzel.
Reid (#6):
said Or is the comma unneeded because the title is dependent/restrictive to "book"?
Yes, that's why the comma is unnecessary. One could be talking about any book.
Read Lynne Truss's book. =)