Serial Comma Society

Hats, gloves, bras, shirts, sandals, and socks off to The Serial Comma Society on Facebook.

We are not alone!

Carry on!

As you were.

March on, Serial Comma Commandos.

(Yes, yes, we struggled over whether to hyphenate between serial and comma. We sided with poetic license, available at the city clerk's office, for a nominative fee.)

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

Don't cry for me, Argentina. (Smile, because The Laughorist used the requisite vocative comma.)

Okay, now to the news.

It turns out Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina has not been hiking the Appalachian Trail after all (the explanation given for his mysterious nearly week-long disappearance), not unless, as someone suggested, "hiking the Appalachian Trail" is code for hiking up an Argentine's skirt and following the path to her forested (or denuded) nether regions. ("Nether mind, dear!") Or perhaps it is code for hiking up one's trousers in Buenos Aires after hunting for whatchamacallit -- and finding it.

Today the guv admitted he was really in Argentina. He's been having an affair. With a woman. In Argentina.

This is delicious.

Call it the Ken Starr Deliciosity Effect. (Remember, Mr. Starr, the Cromwellian who was so titillated by the sexcapades of a Mr. William Jefferson Clinton?)

It is delicious because it is a Republican who got caught. Wait: a sanctimonious, pious, prissy, puritanical, gay-bashing (I only presume that), pharasaical politician of a party that delights in its righteousness. That proudly parades its rectitude (but don't mispronounce that word or you'll be talking naughty, Guv).

Of course, Mark "The Sombrero" Sanford had called for Clinton to resign during L'Affaire Lewinsky. Of course.

Really, I could give a rat's you-know-what about this guy or his private life (or Senator John Ensign's or Senator Larry Craig's or Bill or Hillary Clinton's or anyone else's). But if you want to hold yourself up as some sort of moral standard-bearer or subscribe to the hypocrisy surrounding such shallow hype, well, you are asking for a pie in the face, a pie hand-delivered all the way from sunny South America.

To put the icing on the cake or whatever metaphors we are putting into the mixer: this is the same outraged governor who was appalled by all that federal spending and vowed to receive the so-called stimulus money.

Hey, baby, now we know why. He didn't need no stinking money for no stimulus. He was already stimulated, right down to Nether-nether Land, somewhere near the South Pole.

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

Happy Birthday, Will Shakespeare

Notice the vocative comma in the title of this post.

Kss of Death

Kss of death.

No, it's not a typo.

Yesterday, doing what old people do, I read the obituaries.

In reading the obits, I saw my name in there. Almost.

It was my first name and my last name, with one vowel's difference.

Close cull.

A brash with death.

Saved by a vowel.

Thank you [insert vocative comma here] Vanna White!

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.)