Comma Again?

The following is a semi-demi-hemi-quasi-correction of the immediately preceding post.

(As you'll see, this is getting to be like a Del Shannon song, with a refrain of "comma, comma, comma, ki-yay-ay.")

On Sunday, I broke down and bought the Times (New York, not London). (No matter that the girl at the grocery store thought it was $4, and I felt compelled to convince her the price of the Times is half a sawbuck in locales beyond the NYC metro area. Call me a fool.)

Later, as I am perusing the NYT Book Review, I notice that its vaunted best seller (best stellar?) list lists the aforeposted Cosby/Poussaint book (under "how-to, advice, etc.," but not under "how to punctuate") as "Come On, People" with its proper commatization (the term, albeit indefensible, is mine).

Shivers go down my spine. (Or was it up my spine? Or along my cerebral cortex?)

To be truthful, I had based my whole earlier diatribe on: a) a coupon from Borders showing an image of the book and b) a press release from the publisher, which I linked. But I did not in fact ever have the book physically in my hands to see, with my own non-doubting-Pawlie eyes, what was on the book. (Don't you just love when people say that? How else would the book be in my hands, metaphysically? Whom do you think I am, Plato? [Is that a vocative comma, or an appositive comma?])

This shivering doubt was accompanied by a similar eerie discovery: the Times has a full-page ad for a new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. Again, in a picture of the book, in the ad, it says "tranlation." (Then it dawned on me with gonging clarity: this is what the estimable Murphy's Craw recently blogged about, with his ever-clever headline, which I missed the first time.)

So, tonight I went to Borders, found the book, and picked it up. Here's what I found:

-- The front cover (dust jacket, is that the term?) of the book says "Come On People" without the needed vocative comma.

-- The spine of the dust jacket does the same.

-- The copy on the dust jacket flap, however, refers to the book with the vocative comma. In fact, the copy ends with an exhortation: "Come on, people."

-- The physical book (as opposed to metaphysical) itself has no comma on the spine (if memory serves correctly; what, you think I'm feckin' crazy, standing there taking notes?)

-- Then, within the book, the title pages correctly say "Come On, People."

Do you think this makes me feel as if the error is somehow mitigated because it does not show up everywhere? Wrong. I'll tell you what: the writer/editor in me would rather see it wrong consistently, than inconsistently right. Especially in technical editing, you really want to be consistent in style and in the application of your own rules scheme.

Someone dropped the ball . . . egregiously.

The editor is at fault.

You just cannot let such sloppiness run amok. When you're that sloppy with something so important, who's to say you're not as sloppy, or sloppier, with everything else?

Who needs sloppy seconds, grammatically speaking?

Come on, people.

Comma Drama

Last night, around 10 p.m. a dozen or so young guys paraded out of the second-floor flat of Jesse, the fellow next door. I mean, they looked like a human centipede coming out of the porch. Or like the silk scarves that endlessly come out of a magician's sleeve. Whew!

As predicted by my wife, after their jaunt down the hill, presumably to Coleman's Authentic Irish Pub, the guys (and now a few gals) returned around 2 a.m. and made a ruckus.

Come on, people! We're trying to sleep here!

Speaking of which:

There's a new book out titled:

Come On People

subtitled: On the Path From Victims to Victors

By Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.

Now, based on some of the estimable Mr. Cosby's recent comments and the subtitle, I can surmise that the book has a laudable premise and narrative exposition. Fine. No problem. Applause.

However, I have a quibble with the title.

It needs an important comma placed after the word "on."

Otherwise, without that vocative comma -- how shall I delicately express this? -- the title conjures up an indefensible and impolitic, if pornographic, imperative to broadcast one's seminal "concepts" in a democratic and egalitarian way. Gross!

And Mr. Cosby has a doctorate in education (but not grammar); his co-author is a medical doctor. Come on, guys!

You can rely on The Laughorist to staunchly defend us from solecisms of punctuation.

(And, yes, you can split an infinitive with impunity, as in the sentence above.)