Grammar and the Peeves that Pet It

user777

you mean yeah, not yah bra. "if you're here and the wave breaks, you're gonna get drilled bra". :shades:

pat

Um, actually, I meant "yah" exactly as I said. OTOH, I haven't a clue about what you mean. :P :shades:

user777

yah (impatience) is different from yea, or yeah (yes). i thought you meant the former, not the latter.

and ya bra... is a line from a surfer movie (you've not experienced california life like the other hosts?) were one wave riding vet informs another surfer to be careful of being in the wrong place when the wave breaks, as in he'll be drilled into the seabed (or maybe it was coral reef) and get really hurt. :shades:

stever

O rly?

Kirstie_H

Pedant alert:
It drives me nuts when sports announcers say there's no score in the game when it's 0-0. That, in my book, is still a score. There have been no points scored, but the score is there nonetheless.

kyfdx

Yeah.. but, you are a soccer fan..

It makes perfect sense to football or baseball fans..

user777

the word nonetheless bothers me.

stever

bunch of nilists in here. (yeah, sick -- or should I say sic?).

pat

Depends on from whom you are siccing!

Maybe you should say nihilists, yes? :P

stever

Just a little soccer pun for the Man U and Tottenham Hotspur football fans. I guess the score is still nil-nil if it went over everyone's heads. :shades:

Of course, now I find an appropriate link.

jlbl

How about Love-Fifteen, etc.? Tennis score offers the best elaborated ellipses (and illogical traps) to confuse innocent spectators.

Jose

fezo

Where have you been all my life?

Never mind. My mom used to have the same issue with that. Zero - zero is a score.

She would also give the odd look to those coming late into a game saying, "Oh, there's no score. We haven't missed anything yet."

madmanmoo

"Nihilist"?

Is that what you meant? Or do I just not know that word.

-Moo

stever

I used nilist as a pun on nihilist, thus the "sic" stuck in there too.

Puns are more fun when you don't have to keep explaining them.

stever

CarSpace member (and blogger) Hudsonthedog reports that today, 9/24, is National Punctuation Day.

tallman1

, . ; ' " : !

Just celebrating.

Kirstie_H

That's fantastic! I think I'll celebrate; however, what shall I purchase as a gift? I know - I'll pick up some copies of "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves." You can find it here: Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com.

stever

You have all the elements of style Kirstie. :shades:

cdnpinhead

Wow, a comma before the and in a series -- truly old-school.

Kirstie_H

Like retro furniture, the old-school comma preceding the "and" in a series made a comeback, and is new-school all over again.

Lava lamps rule, and red is the new black.

qbrozen

depends on your industry. In medical, the series comma is standard issue. Always has been. So my old school is still old school ... or is it new school that just hasn't changed? Something like that. ;b

xwesx

*shrugs*

Everything is cyclical. I hate the lack of a comma before the "and." It is another one of those laziness trademarks of modern language.

stever

So, it should be Eats, Shoots, & Leaves? (the title of Truss's book uses the ampersand, not the word "and").

btw, the full title is Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (italized per the rules of the The Chicago Manual of Style...I think. (Hudsonthedog insists that omitting spaces around an ellipse is accepted usage).

Extraneous punctuation marks? The panda says NO!. :shades:

Good review of the book from the New Yorker back in '04.

fezo

I don't believe the missing comma to be laziness. I was taught that the comma before "and" was incorrect. Indeed, it was rather drilled into my head.

Meanwhile, I have always meant to get my hands on "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." I guess it is time.

qbrozen

I find an ampersand in a series to be confusing and therefore should be avoided anyway. :b

pat

I don't believe the missing comma to be laziness. I was taught that the comma before "and" was incorrect. Indeed, it was rather drilled into my head.

I agree. It was drilled into my head as well!!

You will enjoy the book. It's a hoot.

qbrozen

that's the problem with our school systems! ;b

i remember in grade school they used to teach us that the series comma could be omitted if the series was 3 items. Any more than that and you use the comma. Pretty odd. It was in college that we were taught "just use it all the time."

tmart

I, too, was taught to use it all the time.

stever

I was taught either way was fine but the trend was to omit it (this would be junior high back in ... 1965, 67?)

New Math bit me good back then too and I never caught on.

jlbl

The Sun is bright, warm and consistent, and because of these attributes life growths everywhere. It is not so?

Jose

xwesx

I had a teach in middle school who tried to drill it into my head as well, but I was (and am!) a stubborn SOB and pretty much told her where she could stick it. I accepted the added criticism and lower marks from her, and I wrote it off as an insignificant difference of opinion. :P

stever

Boise is pretty bright and sunny Jose. Maybe that's why so many Basque wound up here.

jlbl

Shepherds they used to be, and looked for good pasture land. :shades:

Jose

pat

I agree with your comma placement here. "warm and consistent" is a phrase by itself (and I know there is a name for it, but I have forgotten most, if not all, of the proper terminology). The sentence stands alone without the phrase, so setting the phrase off by commas is correct - in the way that I was taught, anyway. (And I'm sure there's a way better way to explain it, maybe someone can help me out.)

pat

This time I think the comma could be used or not used. Using it is more correct, I think, but I have no words to explain why I think that.

I no longer believe that English is not your first language. :P

Edit: Shoot, you can probably explain the rules behind the commas in both of your posts - have at it!! :shades:

stever

Next you'll tell me that I should have said, "Boise is pretty bright and sunny, Jose." The Trailing of the Sheep festival comes up in a couple of weeks. Big sheep parade.

jlbl

The Trailing of the Sheep festival comes up in a couple of weeks. Big sheep parade.

Steve: here, in Spain, there still are many merino sheep. Yet the annual sheep shearing is frequently done by polish men that come on purpose. I cannot imagine what my grand father could have said about it :surprise: . He traded his horses, sheep and cows with the French across the border. (Though I live next to Bilbao, and very happily, I was born Aragonese at the Pyrenees; so, I have my heart divided now between the Basque Country and Aragon .)

Jose

jlbl

Edit: Shoot, you can probably explain the rules behind the commas in both of your posts - have at it!!

Pat,

As you said about yourself, I cannot tell the technical names of the grammar rules behind my commas. I use them by heart.

For instance, I usually do not write a comma before 'and' when this 'and' is at the end of a word series, no matter whether the series is made of two, three or more words:
The Sun is bright, warm and consistent.

Yet I write a comma before 'and' if the sentence that follows can be written independently. For instance:
The Sun is bright, warm and consistent, and because of these attributes…

But also:
The Sun is bright, warm and consistent; because of these attributes…

Or:
The Sun is bright, warm and consistent. Because of these attributes…

I choose either way in accordance to the emphasis I want to make on the linkage of the expressed ideas. That is, the more united I want for them to appear, a comma; the less, a period. Or else, because of the style. A soft style, a comma; an abrupt one, a period.

In addition, I use to put commas each time I cut a piece of a naturally-written syntactic sentence to move it to other part in the sentence. For instance: I am going to Paris tomorrow / Tomorrow, I am going to Paris. But, again in order to avoid a rough style: Tomorrow I am going to Paris. But for emphasis: My friend and I, we are going to Paris tomorrow. (Translated into Spanish: Mi amigo y yo nos vamos a París mañana.)

Those are my rules. As far as I know, they are alike in Spanish, English and French. And even in German! May be the use of colons and semicolons has survived more in modern Spanish (than in English).

Regards,
Jose

jlbl

I no longer believe that English is not your first language.

It is not even my third! I wish it would have been at least the second, but learned at my early childhood. My English accent is not good, and in addition the idioms and the jargon of current English made me suffer a lot. I rather understand the dialogs of a classic movie than those of the moderns (aside from the fact that actors did not vocalize at all in modern movies—English, Spanish or whichever.)

I love languages, I posted this before. I am a native Spanish speaker. My grand parents spoke also Aragonese, and I could understand them perfectly. (I cannot speak Basque, however: it is so different from Indo-European languages than it is very difficult to learn it in the adulthood.) I learned French at School in my tens. And further on, because living next to the border I had a couple of French girl-friends before dating my wife , who is half-French as well. In my twenties I learned German and English. The former, because I did my postdoc in Germany. The latter, because I needed it and I still do because of my job. I am a scientist, and I use to lecture in English and attend conferences in several places around the year. Also, I use to write in English peer-refereed papers. Then I have to have a style, not exactly literary but at least something close to a style. In any case, I love reading and writing.

When I started to learn English, I use to think that English and Spanish were truly different languages indeed. I therefore was afraid I could never express myself in English. However, the more I learned English, the more I found that the grammar of both languages are essentially alike to each other. And I eventually dared to let my mind free when speaking or writing in English, even if following grammar rules drilled in my Spanish-structured brain when I was I a child.

Jose

oregonboy

From: http://www.english.ucla.edu

"Use a comma to separate the elements in a series (three or more things), including the last two. "He hit the ball, dropped the bat, and ran to first base." You may have learned that the comma before the "and" is unnecessary, which is fine if you're in control of things. However, there are situations when, if you don't use this comma (especially when the list is complex or lengthy), these last two items in the list will try to glom together (like macaroni and cheese). Using a comma between all the items in a series, including the last two, avoids this problem."

They agree with the usage that I was taught.

james

jlbl

"He hit the ball, dropped the bat, and ran to first base."

Yes, in this case I would also have written a comma before the 'and'. That comma really helps in keeping the actions separate from one another. And it furnishes the sentence with a better rithm. As an aficionado , I am happy to see that UCLA confirms my intuition.

Jose

cdnpinhead

what could be started by a simple comment on a series comma.

Glad to see I'm not the only pinhead where these things are concerned (I think).

Kudos to Jose. I couldn't imagine having a grammar (well, punctuation actually) discussion in a second or third language and having it come across so clearly. Well done!

stever

Daylight Saving Time is correct. But it sounds crappy. So I don't say it. :P

Spring forward, Fall back

user777

shouldn't that have been mix those two up, and
people in high-up, executive positions?

(note in the latter, the use of a hyphen and a comma)

idiots, i tell ya. ...that's not proper prose either... :shades:

cdnpinhead

this has taken an ugly turn, as is often the case when the people (0.02%?) who care and/or know about this stuff speak up.

There's often a difference of opinion, on top of the fact that the vast, vast (really vast) majority of people who speak English couldn't care less.

madmanmoo

Oddly enough, you posted my thoughts about his post. I guess I just didn't have the heart to put it up there. :P

-moo

user777

Call me Dr. Killjoy.

pat

That's one thing that gets under my skin. For example, "revert back", a commonly used phrase that literally means "go back back".

One that's becoming common around here lately is "CVT transmission", meaning "Continuously Variable Transmission transmission". One I've seen rampant in the military world is "CAC card" which means "Common Access Card card".

I know there are a number of others that grate on my nerves which aren't coming to mind at the moment - anyone else?

stever

I had a fun visit over Thankgiving sightseeing along the Rio Grande River.

This looks like an absolutely essential site for a bunch of pleonasms.

kyfdx