comma sense

The billboard, for local baseball, declared:

AFFORDABLE, FAMILY, FUN.

Whoa! I may've been speeding on the intrastate as I spied the sign, but I nevertheless feel my recollection is accurate.

Why those commas, copywriter dude or dudette?

I recognize that some folks believe punctuation is wedded to sound. It is. To a point. Punctuation choices (e.g., employing or not employing commas) certainly can be influenced by desires related to cadence and rhythm. Subjective considerations along those lines might turn out to be important, especially in poetry or in a speech.

However.

Punctuation also conforms to rules of structure and logic. In the example above, logic is defied as to why commas are employed. In fact, the commas nearly make me laugh.

Granted, one could argue that copywriters readily use periods for dramatic effect, to slow the reader down. As in: AFFORDABLE. FAMILY. FUN. That might be mighty fine except in this case the lack of parallelism is jarring. We have different parts of speech. It throws the train off the tracks.

Commas matter.

And no commas matter, too. 

comma sense

Who says punctuation doesn't matter?

Don't get me wrong. Although I posture as a purist, I recognize, mostly through texting, that we humans who speak English tend to figure things out, despite missing apostrophes, periods, commas, whatnot. And I thought I heard in my linguistics course decades ago that simplification in language is actually a mark of sophistication. (I would have to research that now; comments invited to affirm, explain, or invalidate that assertion.)

On the black-pepper grinder and shaker, the instructions declare:

TO ADJUST GRIND

followed by directions for counterclockwise hand turnings for coarser or finer results.

Imagine adding a comma:

TO ADJUST, GRIND

as in:

to adjust to your quotidian challenges, grind through them, yielding either coarser or finer results, peppery or not, seasoning your day, discovering its flavor and zest despite any blandness or bitterness.

Evocative Vocative

Sign above a bathroom at a Tipperary Hill cafe:

CUSTOMERS ONLY PLEASE

Without the vocative comma after the word "only," we can surmise that customers only please if they are in the mood, or if someone or something suits their fancy. Or we can conclude that said customers only please, but nothing else.

And why the pleasing in the private confines of the bathroom? What the heck is going on in there? I won't ask, if you won't tell.

(Of course, switching the position of "only" invites other questions.)

All the difference one comma can make.

Chief Commando, Serial Comma Brigade

Elan

He had such elan, joie de vivre, zest, abandon. Fun.

Playing a game, baseball.

His name was Willie Mays. Number 24, of the New York Giants, then the San Francisco Giants, and finally the New York Mets.

He was my boyhood hero.

Why? It's not too complicated. I asked my older brother, Richard, which team he liked. The Giants, he said. I watched. I discovered Mays was a star when the word meant something.

A daring performer, a zen master, a thrill to watch.

Born May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama.

I have written a barely fictional short story about all this. I like the way it turned out. Maybe, like blogger JR, I will surrender my pretenses to propriety and abandon my quest for ill-sought fame and validation, and publish it here, or elsewhere, online.

Not today, though.

What would Willie do?

He'd swing away, dive for the ball, leap against the fence, steal a base, try for third.

Happy birthday [insert the typically forgotten vocative comma here] Willie.

And thanks.

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.)

Let's Stop Serial-Comma Killing Now!

We know society exhibits moral outrage over serial killings, as well it should.




But why the widespread apathy over the death throes of the serial comma?




Fight the good fight. Become a Serial Comma Commando today!


The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma or the Harvard comma, is the comma found in this construction:

Hurray for the red, white, and blue.

Believers of the use of this construction (like me) insist on that comma after the word white.

My particular reasons are straightforward: consistency and lack of ambiguity.

At least I thought so until I checked out the entry for topic at Wikipedia. I must say, the entry is exhaustive and entertaining.

It gives cogent arguments both for and against.

I used to be a newspaper copy editor. Nearly all newspapers (at least in American and Canada) do not use the serial comma. The New York Times and The Washington Post, excellent newspapers, do not employ that comma after the word white in the example above. Nearly all book publishers used to use it. The New Yorker magazine still uses it.

I reject the argument (made by some, including Lynne Truss of the popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves) that this style decision is variable depending on context and circumstances. (Oh, of course, you can find an exception to any rule. So, yes, all such decisions are potentially variable. I'm not talking about that. Oliver Wendell Holmes said something like you have to know the rules before you know how to break them. I'm talking about the rule here, not the exception[s].)

I say adhere to the rule, or not, but do so consistently.

It is troubling in recent years to find myself reading a novel and to encounter style usage all over the place on this.

Sloppy.

Most of you say this is all silly and does not matter.

I'll close with the wonderful example from The Chicago Manual of Style (which, naturally, supports the view of the serial comma embraced by The Laughorist):

According to the erudite and entertaining folks at the University of Chicago Press (check out their FAQ section), not using the serial comma can put you in this pickle with this hypothetical book dedication:

"With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope."

Laugh. Or....

Else.