Comma Carnage
I read like a goat eats. I don’t see punctuation, and whatever is in my way, well, it sure doesn’t effect my comprehension, as it clearly does smiling Dan’s. Btw, Jennifer, nice grenade you launched at him a while back. I’m guessing he didn’t see it. However, whenever I read something I’ve written, say, more than three days ago, I’m astounded by the number of of typos, and, what Adam refers to as my comma carnage.
Does it make a difference that I know I’m repeating myself? It’s all so I can post this cartoon which applies to me more than this one.
I’d’a made “a while” into one word, but I’d’a commaed exactly as you did in this post (recognizing that there are those who’d be mortified and would take about half of ’em out … ). So adroit of you, though, to walk obediently up to the stockades in our town center acknowledging your crimes against punctuation, all the while publishing them in a post piece so perfectly punctuated as to precluding the public humiliation you purport to profess deserved. You sly dog, you.
Comment by adam — February 28, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
Commas in the wrong place are generally ok with me, but homonym errors, such as affect/effect, always bug me. Especially in sentences like yours, because I have to consider whether, possibly, whatever is in your way DOESN’T bring about your comprehension. I mean, maybe … Who can say what makes another person understand?
Oops, was that another grenade? I love you all.
Comment by jennifer — February 28, 2008 @ 9:08 pm
Sometimes absent commas or misplaced commas, as Lynne Truss in “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” points out, do change the meaning. Her example is “a huge hot dog” and “a huge, hot dog”.
Comment by rakkity — February 28, 2008 @ 10:31 pm
Nice lob, Jennifer. I think we’re tickling more funny bones these days and that effects how I feel.
“Shoots” received its share of shots from the know-it-alls, and in that example wouldn’t it have helped to use the disambiguation version hotdog?
Comment by michael — February 29, 2008 @ 7:58 am
Anything to avoid using a comma!
Comment by rakkity — February 29, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Yeah, making other people laugh always makes me feel good too (except when they are clearly laughing at me, but then I just give them detentions).
A funny thing happened earlier. Well, not funny like your great stories of hunting for the newspaper you’ve already brought in or sweetly funny like Hil’s request at age 3, but anyway, here it is (after a new paragraph for smiling D.)
I was trying to write about how confusing I found the phrase “disambiguation version hotdog” in comment #4, but I couldn’t finish my comment before I had to leave for Pease Air Terminal where the Airbus from Columbus comes in — and what an odd experience that was!
I was thinking it was an el Kib kind of phrase, where you have to mentally de-obfuscate each of the words individually. But I didn’t feel like hunting for the type of phrase that I meant, and now, right on cue, el Kib has provided one: “Obstinately hexalexical prose”.
Btw, I did emerge from my confusion when I read comment #3. “… huge hot dog” is a terrible example, as Michael points out!
Comment by jennifer — February 29, 2008 @ 11:37 pm
I think you may pay more attention to what’s written here than anyone. But then as your younger daughter and I’ve discussed, you just plain pay attention.
I take it her plane finally arrived.
Do you suppose Adam plays hide and seek with himself?
Comment by michael — February 29, 2008 @ 11:56 pm
I love it when something is lol funny, while I have no idea what it means. And it isn’t the image of Adam playing hide-and-seek with himself that was funny, either (because as a teacher, the idea of people playing group games by themselves just makes me sad).
Have you all noticed that I (over-)use parentheses and em-dashes where Michael (over-)uses commas?
Yes, her plane landed. It’s great to see her, but now non-GMO* food** makes her feel sick. Slightly problematic, since I don’t exactly keep track of that. Maybe I’ll have to send her to my sister.
*Or do I mean that is GMO? I THINK it means Genetically Modified Organic; i.e. organic, and it can’t be genetically modified either.
**Maybe that was just non-GMO meat.
Comment by jennifer — March 1, 2008 @ 10:26 am
According to Wiki’s disambiguator, GMO is Genetically Modified Organism.
Comment by rakkity — March 1, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Ah. (See, I tend to lose what I’ve written as a comment when I try to check spellings and abbreviations.) So, I meant she only feels healthy eating non-GMO food.
Comment by jennifer — March 1, 2008 @ 11:54 am