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• l o w o v e r h e a d p o e t r y a n d performance a r t collaborative m e n u
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Or, let the comma be your friend -- but not TOO good a friend. By The Grammar Underground Lately, we in the Grammar Underground have been wondering about whether there is, or should be, a principle of the "conservation of commas."* (We might call it "Comma Conservation" or "CC" for short.) Do people generally scavenge commas from the places they should be in order to put them in the places they shouldn’t? We reserve judgment on this score while waiting for more information from our editorial affiliates. In fact, our editorial affiliates have recently made us aware of a thing called “Open Punctuation” that (not "which," we being American**) suggests to us that at least in some quarters commas have simply been drained from the language entirely. The previous sentence, as you may have guessed, is an example of Open Punctuation. Apparently, this is a common practice in Great Britain, though apparently Americans who teach business writing have raised the OP flag as well. Some even refer to it as a "contemporary style of punctuation." We in the Grammar Underground have learned to be skeptical of all things contemporary. We see the potential for a Great Comma Dearth in our future -- something about which all friends of the comma should be concerned. Another example: Dear Mrs Brown Due to repeated late payments and the lack of response to our inquiries we have been forced to cancel your account. As Miss Manners once said, manifesting a healthy regard for our friend the comma, "You, sir, are an anarchist." Open Punctuation, we believe, is the last refuge of scoundrels (read: global capital). But this is not, in fact, our topic for today's rant. Our topic is this: The abuse of apposition. By which practice poor Mrs Brown would find herself faced with the unintelligible sentence Due to, repeated late payments, and the lack of response, to our inquiries, we have been forced, to cancel your account. The Abuse of Apposition, or AA, as we might call it, is in effect the extreme version of the third alternative. Neither the product of Comma Conservation, nor of Open Punctuation, it instead appears to promote an abundance, nay, excess of our small, unobtrusive indicator of pauses. Perhaps even an embarrassment thereof. A Great Society of the Comma. Some might say that such a syntax has promise. Its philosophical implications seem to be the leveling of segments of society, the placing of all on an equal plane, Neither radically individualist nor entirely unarticulated, AA suggests the possibility of a punctuational utopian society. Yet if truth be told we find this practice perilous. Perilously close, in fact, to that dreaded enemy of freedom -- yes, you guessed it, commarade -- we're talking about COMMANISM. (To Be Continued.) *The same might be said for apostrophes. Do those who add them to plurals take them away from possessives? Robbing the rich, as it were, to give to the multiculti liberals? **Also, being red-blooded American writers, we place periods and commas within quotes, not outside of them, and urge others to do the same. Back to the Grammar Underground Comments:From always ironic [128.135.245.143] - 4/23/04 5:57 PM I thought that "To Be Continued" was irony. In the sense that you can pretty much see where it's going, and just about anyone would be qualified to finish it, so why bother?
From nicole - 4/23/04 4:44 PM nothing's more contemporary than the romance novel.
From pseudonym - 4/23/04 4:04 PM IN FACT, it is from said site that we cribbed the word "contemporary," as in,
Open punctuation is a contemporary way of punctuating your writing.
From nicole - 4/23/04 2:15 PM Up to the minute, it seems that we only urge others to DO the same. I must confess to being somewhat relieved to find that we are not total fascists. Apparently we're strict but fair.
From nicole - 4/23/04 2:11 PM *In my experience, those who add apostrophes to the plural DO in fact snatch them away from possessives. Conservation of apostrophes riles!
**It's possible that we urge you to DO the same, not BE the same. It's unclear exactly how strict the grammar underground is about these internal states. I suppose it's possible that we feel you should monitor even your fantasties of grammar and not just your grammatical conduct. Last Modified 4/23/04 4:32 PM | Hide Tools |