Just My Type

I might have to change the focus of this blog from grammar to Mad Men. All I want to do is talk about the show. I want to talk about what they’re going to do with Sally’s character and how handsome Don Draper is and how funny Roger Sterling is this season. I’m particularly obsessed with Don’s new wife, Meghan. I thought her "Zou Bisou Bisou" rendition was awesome.

I knew it was only a matter of time before Don remarried because psychologist Dr. Faye Miller foreshadowed it when she said, “You’ll be married again in a year. I forget that some people don’t like to think they’re a type.”

The part about people not liking to think they’re a type really stuck with me. I, of course, would like to think that I am a unique, little snowflake, but a few years ago I learned that I was a type. Someone said to me, “You’re an English teacher and you drive a Saab; you must be a liberal.” Apparently, I’m a cliché!

I guess there is something comforting about knowing that there are like-minded people out there. And it’s also nice to know that, thanks to the comma, I have some control over how much I can emphasize those similarities.

For example, let’s say I met a liberal-minded, English-teaching, Saab driver with Don Draper’s looks, Roger Sterling’s sense of humor, and Peggy Olsen’s feminist ideals. I would definitely want to stress our similarities. Therefore, if he said, “I love heirloom tomatoes,” I would respond with:

I, too, love heirloom tomatoes.

I love heirloom tomatoes, too.

Using commas with too emphasizes it. If we don’t want to emphasize the too, we simply don’t use commas:

I too love heirloom tomatoes.

I love heirloom tomatoes too.

Okay, so enough of that grammar nonsense. Do you think Betty and Meghan will meet? Do you think Joan’s husband will come home from Vietnam to a silver-haired baby? Do you think Don will cheat on Meghan?

Is it Sunday night yet?

Snow White and the Seven Million Comma Rules

A few posts back, Shelly from the blog La Tejana wrote in my comments section, "If you've got anything in your bag of tricks to rid 8th graders of their fear of commas, I'd love hear it." In response, I'd like to share the story of how I overcame my fear of commas:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was like Belle from Beauty in the Beast. By comparing herself to Belle, she doesn’t mean to be stuck-up and imply that she was beautiful and kind; she just means that she was brunette, attracted to hairy men, and always had her nose in a book. In college, she was one of those nerdy students who loved listening to her English professors’ lectures about symbolism, language, and character development. She couldn’t wait to be an English professor herself so she could share all the valuable knowledge she had accumulated about literature.

And then one day it happened. She heard the clop clop of horses’ hooves and saw a sparkly coach pull up outside of her house. From the coach emerged a man in tights carrying a satin pillow with a scroll on top of it. He presented her with the scroll, which was a job offer to teach college English. Her wish had been granted!

Well, not exactly.

She had not been hired to teach literature; she had been hired to teach a remedial English class—a class on basic grammar and writing skills. She had never officially studied such material, but since she was an avid reader and had a good memory, she had always gotten by grammatically. Sure, there had been times when she wasn’t sure whether or not a sentence required a comma and would consequently rewrite the whole entire sentence so she didn’t have to deal with it. And there were other times when she would find commas written in red ink on her college essays, but since she had received A’s on the essays, she didn’t pay those comma errors any attention. But she figured that as a teacher she would just rely on the text book and everything would be okay.

Accordingly, on the day that she was to teach commas, she glanced over the text before class. She would have the students read the lessons, do the accompanying exercises, and then they would go over them together. But something happened that she had not anticipated: a student raised his hand and asked her a question. The book had said that a comma follows introductory phrases and then gave these two examples:

By four in the afternoon, everybody wanted to go home.

After the game on Saturday, we all went dancing.

Because that was the extent of the book’s lesson, the student asked her what an introductory phrase was. She knew an introductory phrase when she saw it, but she didn’t know how to explain it. And that, she realized, was how she was with all the comma rules: she had but a vague understanding of them.

She was so embarrassed that she wanted to turn into a pumpkin. She even thought about throwing in the towel and shacking up with seven little men. But what she actually did was put her nose back in the books and studied commas. It took studying many books and websites until she fully understood them. But all the time and effort was worth it because not only could she better help her students; she never had to rewrite a sentence again due to comma insecurity.

So the moral of the story is that comma rules are to us like the Seven Dwarfs were to Snow White. Because there are so many of them, they can be a little overwhelming at first. But once we accept them and really get to know them, we realize just how helpful they are.

And they all lived grammatically ever after!

When the Cats Are Away

I should have seen this coming. I should have alerted Buckingham Palace before they left, but I guess I was just so bloody excited that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were coming to my continent that I was in denial.

I wonder if William and Kate even know that the day before they left for their tour—the day when they would have been too busy transferring all of their carry-on liquids into 3.4 ounce bottles to notice—that England reverted back to its Sex Pistol "Anarchy in the U.K." ways and did away with the Oxford comma.

It’s actually worse than you think: it was the Oxford Style Guide that dropped it.

The Oxford Style Guide dropping the Oxford comma! That’s like Chicago refusing to serve the Chicago-style hot dog. It’s like Frankfurt banning the frankfurter or Brussels ditching brussel sprouts or Cologne outlawing nice-smelling liquids. (I want to say it’s ironic, but I’m terrified to say it’s ironic because of the Alanis Morissette backlash.)

The Oxford comma is the comma that comes before the and when listing items in a series:

I’d like a frankfurter, brussel sprouts, and cologne.

I get that technically we don’t need it because we’ve got the and there to separate the second to last item from the last. But I was always told the Oxford comma was optional, and since not too many things in the grammar world are optional, I appreciated having the choice.

What say you?

"God save the Oxford comma" or "Cheerio and good riddance?"

Reference:

Boog, Jason. "Oxford Comma Dropped by a University of Oxford Style Guide." Galley Cat. 29 June 2011. Web. 5 July 2011.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

I am shocked when people tell me they hate grocery shopping. What’s not to love? It combines two of the best things in the world: shopping and food. And what’s even better is that it’s mandatory shopping, like if you don’t do it, you will starve to death. I try to make a similar argument about clothes- that my soul will starve to death if it isn’t fed a new top or pair of shoes weekly- but my husband doesn’t buy it.

The only thing that makes me uncomfortable about grocery shopping is what sometimes happens when I am in the check-out lane. When someone lines up behind me and starts unloading items on the counter, I get anxiety about whether or not to place that rubber stopper between my food and theirs. I don’t want them to feel like I don’t trust them or that I am so cheap I am terrified of paying for their watermelons.

But, then I remind myself, “Jenny, we use the rubber stopper like we use the comma, to separate items from one another so it’s easier on everyone.” And that makes me feel better about slapping it down.

Example: I bought chocolate pudding fruit juice rice milk and beer.

Without the commas, we don’t know if I bought chocolate pudding or chocolate and pudding, fruit juice or fruit and juice, rice milk or rice and milk.

So, we add the commas and it’s crystal clear:

I bought chocolate pudding, fruit, juice, rice milk, and beer.

That's right, I like rice milk.

However, here’s a trickier scenario. Say you are going to the market on your lunch break and your colleague hands you twenty dollars and asks you to buy her a Red Bull. And you think, “Shit, that girl talks enough as it is without an energy drink, and I don’t have any cash, so I am going to have to pay separately for my stuff and her stuff. This sucks!”

Wouldn’t it be nice if, for those rare occasions, the supermarket provided two sizes of rubber stoppers: one small one to divide your items from your colleague’s items and then a larger one to divide your and your colleague’s items from those belonging to the person behind you? Otherwise, don’t you kind of feel guilty, like you are taking two turns in line?

The punctuation world offers something akin to the two sizes of rubber stoppers. If the items we list in a series already contain commas, then we use semi-colons to separate those items:

Last weekend, I shopped at Whole Foods, where I bought my produce; Ralphs, where I bought household items; and Trader Joe’s, where I went because the cute check-out guys always starts up conversations with me.

I know it must be part of the Trader Joe's customer service training, but, what can I say, I’m a sucker for male attention. Now, you see why I need to buy more clothes: so I can wear them when I go grocery shopping.

Brazilman

When my husband and I lived in Byron Bay, Australia, our closest beach was a nude beach. It was too convenient and beautiful to forsake, so, yes, now I have seen many grown men naked- especially those in their golden years who like to fish nude with their buddies. After a few visits, we became so comfortable with the unclothed human form, we even stopped snickering at the group of nude yogis who practiced on the beach, although naked Down Dog was a little tough to get used to.

So, after a few months of living there, it should not have been weird when a nude man came up to me and my friends and handed us a flier for a party- but it was. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but as I watched his naked body saunter down the beach, I kept thinking that there was something peculiar about him. Finally, it hit me: he was completely shaved- everywhere.

That was my first and only experience with such an extreme form of “manscaping.” Why did he do it? Did he want to be smooth? Did he want to draw more attention to his penis? Would men also soon adopt landing strips and bedazzle their penises?

Why not? The gender gap is decreasing, and we women have been using tricks to either accentuate or minimize certain assets for ages. There are make-up tricks to make our noses look smaller and our eyes look bigger. We wear high heels to make our legs appear longer. And we are obsessed with manipulating the size of our breasts: In the 1920s women detracted attention away from their breasts by binding them. In the 1950s boobs were big and cone-shaped. And in the 1990s, the Wonderbra did for cleavage what Grunge did for flannels.

In that way, bras are like punctuation marks. Depending on which punctuation marks we use to “cup” certain phrases, we either attract or detract attention from them.

Parentheses around the phrase minimize its importance:

The naked guy at the beach (the hairless one) invited us to a party.

Commas neither accentuate nor minimize. They imply that the phrase is equally as important as the rest of the sentence:

The naked guy at the beach, the hairless one, invited us to a party.

Dashes totally accentuate it:

The naked guy at the beach- the hairless one- invited us to a party.

You know what we should do? Before anyone else thinks of it, we should contact the Fruit of the Loom guys and pitch them the idea of padded underwear for men. What should we call them? I’m thinking something with banana. Or maybe even papaya. It's too bad butternut squash isn't a fruit.


Resource:

http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/parentheses/parentheses/

Battle of the Sexes

My dad sent this to me in an email the other day:

An English professor wrote the words: "A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."

Are you ready for this...........?

All the females in the class wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

First of all, I don't believe that all of the male students punctuated the sentence one way and all of the females punctuated it another. But I get the point: punctuation isn’t just used to let us know when a sentence is over or to separate items in a series; it can also be used to perpetuate the battle between the sexes.

Well, women’s income may only be 79.9% of men’s and the NBA may be infinitely more popular than the WNBA, but, sorry guys, the women have won the punctuation challenge.

For the record, let me just say that, as a woman, I find no gratification in the females winning. I have come to peace with the opposite sex. I have put down my sword, so to speak. I believe that men and women are equal and equally need one another. However, as a grammar lesson, let's break down why the females won.

The females punctuated their sentence perfectly to connote that a man is nothing without a woman. But, the males’ sentence didn’t quite manage to suggest the opposite.

If the males would have just left the sentence as it was and not added the commas, they would have tied with the females by successfully connoting that women are nothing without men.

The commas the males added around without her man suggest that without her man is extra information, and thus, can be taken out without altering the meaning of the sentence- but it can’t.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at a sentence in which extra information is correctly set off with commas:

Jane, without her man, managed to open the jar of spaghetti sauce.

If we take out without her man, this is our sentence:

Jane managed to open the jar of spaghetti sauce.

The fact that she opened it without a man present is just added detail. The important thing is that she got the stupid jar open.

Now, let’s go back to the males’ sentence:

A woman, without her man, is nothing.

Now, let’s remove without her man:

A woman is nothing.

Oh really? Someone get me my sword.

Yeah... I Guess He's with Me

I don’t have much of an opinion about Russell Brand and Katy Perry as individuals, but as a couple, I'm so in. It's rare that both partners in a relationship are so over-the-top. I mean, imagine the two of them getting dressed to go somewhere: "Wear the one made of aluminium (pronounced alyouminium)." "Unbutton it one, no two, more." "Hang on, Love; I'll grab the scissors and make that slit a little bloody higher." "The shiny gold ones, for sure."

If my husband showed up to an event wearing Russell's outfit, I would probably try to button at least one button while he wasn't looking and, with a sheepish expression on my face, make excuses about his outfit to others: "We only had time to do a load of whites."

I know that married couples are supposed to be supportive of one another, but, is it just me, or do you sometimes get kind of embarrassed by what your partner does and try to distance yourself from his or her actions?

I know that Edgar Alward did. He tried to distance himself from a decision his wife, Jean, made. Edgar and Jean Alward are the married couple that co-wrote the book Punctuation Plain & Simple. Well, actually, I am not sure they are married. They could be brother and sister or mother and son or father and daughter or two people who coincidentally share the same last name, but something in the book leads me to believe they are married.

I was reading the comma section, and it was listing the comma rules just like any other punctuation guide. And then I read this:

"One form of the use of the comma that has recently become apparent to one of the authors of this book is the use of the comma in place of the word that."

Can’t you just feel the passive aggression in "has recently become apparent to ONE of the authors (rolls his eyes in Jean's direction) of this book"? I imagine that Jean told Edgar about this rule and Edgar didn't agree, but Jean insisted, so he reluctantly gave in.

This is the example they used in the book to prove the rule:

The bad news is, there is one more bureaucratic hassle for small businesses. The good news is, it could in the long run save them a lot of trouble and expense.

(I am interpreting the "bureaucratic hassle" as code for Jean’s insistence to include this rule and "trouble and expense" as divorce.)

I think both Edgar and Jean have a point, though.

Like Jean, I have often felt like sentences that start by announcing something with a phrase ending in is need something after the is.

But, like Edgar, I could never find a rule to support it. In fact, so far, the only place I've encoutered it is in their book. I am actually curious how it became "apparent to her." Did she have some sort of epiphany? Did it come to her in a dream?

But, I must say, I do like it. I’m thinking about embracing it.

What about you? Team Edgar or Team Jean?

Play It Again, Taylor

It was summer 1998; the sun was out, the car windows were rolled down, Dave Matthew’s “Crash into Me” was blasting on KROQ. I was singing along so passionately and shamelessly the guy in the car next to me must have wished he had ear plugs: “Crash into me. Whoa oh oh. Crash into meeeee. Baby...” I didn’t ever want the song to end. And, much to my pleasure, the DJ felt the same way; he did something I had never before experienced: he immediately played it again.

When I was little, my mom, sister and I saw Hairspray (the original one with Ricki Lake and Divine), and we loved it so much that when the movie ended, we simply stayed in our seats and watched the next showing.

And just about every time I get a scoop of ice cream and think I am ready to settle into watching my shows, I get up to get a second serving.

Variety isn’t always the spice of life; sometimes it’s repetition.

We can also experience this phenomenon when we are writing. It doesn’t happen often, but there are times when the word we want to use after another word is the same word. For example:

If I had had more ice cream, I would have gone back for a third serving.

I think that that scene in which Taylor Lautner rips off his shirt should be watched over and over and over again.

It’s fine to occasionally use two of the same words in a row, but do we have to insert a comma between them?

Sometimes.

In the previous examples, we don’t. We only use the comma when we use two successive identical verbs and one of them ends the subject clause and the other begins the verb clause. For example:

The powers that those abs have, have captivated a nation.

The subject of that sentence is:

The powers that those abs have

And the verb is:

have captivated

Here's another example when we need a comma (I'll underline the subject and italicize the verb):

Unfortunately, however old Taylor is, is not old enough to make me not feel like a pedophile.

Note: I apologize for using awkward sentences for my examples. I couldn't think of better ones at the time to illustrate the point, and now I am too lazy to go back to change them.

Yes, I Do Need All These Shoes

“Heather left behind one of her Swatches. She'd want you to have it, Veronica. She always said you couldn't accessorize for shit.”
Heathers

Accessories are kind of a sensitive subject in my household. There's a lot of "do you really need all of those shoes?", "don't you already have a black handbag," and "what's this $300 Coach charge on the credit card."

"Oh, um... that must be when I flew coach to visit my dad."

So, I was pleasantly surprised when the dictionary confirmed the importance of accessories by defining them as:

An article or set of articles of dress, as gloves, earrings, or a scarf, that adds completeness, convenience, attractiveness, etc., to one's basic outfit.

Did you see that? The dictionary says accessories add COMPLETENESS. Do you want me to be incomplete?

But, it might as well just have shown this picture, right?

Now, I know that Angelina Jolie's lips are really the only accessory she needs, but pairing that black dress with those emerald earrings was genius, right? Here's a closer look to show their full glory:

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it's Madonna's picture that should be found in the dictionary under accessories. The 80's wouldn't have been the 80's without the lace gloves, the bandana, the bracelets, and the beauty mark:

Although, I think my favorite has to be her newest accessory:

Here, let me get you a closer look to show its full glory:

Sometimes it's even a good idea to accessorize our sentences. We accessorize sentences by adding some extra detail or emphasis to an otherwise basic sentence. To show you how it works, let's start with this basic sentence:

Jolie's emerald earrings were gorgeous.

Now, I am going to accessorize it with some added detail:

Jolie's emerald earrings, which really made her outfit, were gorgeous.

Now, the reason the words I added to the second sentence are added detail is because I don't need them to convey the meaning of my sentence, which is simply that the earrings were gorgeous. I just felt like adding my opinion that they really did spice up her look.

Here's another example:

Madonna has impeccable taste in accessories.

And, now I am going to add some emphasis:

Madonna has impeccable taste in accessories, especially the ones with the glimmering torsos.

So, it's great to add detail and emphasis to sentences, but as you can see from the examples above, you have to make sure to set it off by commas.

It's important to set off the extra information with commas because the commas affect the meaning of the sentence. For example, here's a lie I told my husband:

Studies shows that women who are allowed their sartorial creativity are more creative in bed.

Now, we might ask ourselves whether or not who are allowed their sartorial creativity is extra information and should, therefore, include commas, like this:

Studies shows that women, who are allowed their sartorial creativity, are more creative in bed.

So, to check, let's take out that information and see what our sentence looks like:

Studies show that women are more creative in bed.

Well, that's not what I was trying to convey. I am not trying to say that all women are more creative in bed, just the ones that are not hassled every time they walk in the door with a Nordstrom bag. Without that information, I am not making the case that my accessories really are important for our relationship. Therefore, we do not insert commas.

Oh, and on that note, I might need to take another one of those coach trips. I haven't seen my mom in ages.

Because You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression

My mom: Guess who I saw at the market today?

Me: Who?

My mom: Mrs. Jenson. You went to elementary school with her son Kevin. Did you know that Kevin's a neurosurgeon now? He lives in a mansion in Newport Coast. He's really handsome too; his mom showed me a picture.

Me: Who? Poopy Pants?

Yes, when Kevin Jenson was five years old, standing on the diving board staring terrified into six feet deep water, he had a little accident. So, even if thirty years later he has saved thousands of lives, has Hugh Jackman's abs and Johnny Depp's haunting stare, he will still just be Poopy Pants to me.

= Still Poopy Pants



First impressions are hard to shake. Say you are introduced to a girl at a party and she snubs you, but after running into her a few more times, you come to find out that she's actually pretty cool. You also find out that on the day that you first met her she had lost her job, her dog, and her boyfriend- but, you still kind of think she's a bitch.

Because first impressions can be so damning, it’s important that we put the commas in the correct places. To see what I mean, check out these sentences:

When I eat the dog always waits for my scraps.

If you're ever in the mood to give head over to the local charity.

C'mon, admit it: after reading the sentences, your first impression was that I am some kind of sicko. Maybe after a couple of reads, you realized that I'm neither a dog eater nor a pervert, but for the rest of our lives, if someone mentions the Missed Periods and Other Grammar Scares blog, you’ll say, “Oh yeah, that’s written by that perverted chick who eats dogs.”

Geez. Tough crowd. If I had only put those commas:

When I eat, the dog always waits for my scraps.

If you're ever in the mood to give, head over to the local charity.

So that you don't have some unfortunate misunderstanding for which you are judged forever more, allow me to explain this comma rule. The rule applies when we have a sentence that is comprised of two parts: an introductory phrase and an independent clause.

The introductory phrase is a phrase that begins the sentence telling us one of these five things:

When
Where
Why
How
Under What Circumstances

An independent clause is basically another word for a complete sentence. It can stand on its own. Hear it roar.

So, when an introductory phrase precedes an independent clause, it's kind of like when foreplay precedes sex: we need to separate foreplay and sex with a condom just like we need to to separate the introductory phrase and independent clause with a comma. Here are some examples of such sentences:

When Sam first met Alice, she had something in her teeth.

when

Between her incisor and molar hung something green and slimy.

Where

*No comma because hung something green and slimy is not an independent clause.

Because Sam loves spinach, he reached over and kissed her.

why

With expert use of his tongue, Sam dislodged the spinach and swallowed it.

how

If she hadn't eaten that spinach salad, Sam and Alice may not be married.

under what circumstances

The real clue to knowing if we have an introductory phrase on our hands is the first word in the sentence. For example, if our sentence starts with the word when, we know that the phrase will be telling when. If our sentence starts with the word because, we know it will be telling why. If our sentence starts with the word if, we know it will be telling you under which circumstances.

Here’s a list of other words that commonly begin an introductory phrase (there are more, but hopefully you get the idea.):

When: As soon as, After, At, Before, During, Until, When
Where: Above, Across, Below, Behind, Beneath, Beside, In, On
Why: Because, In order to, So that, To
How: By, With, Without
Under what circumstances: Although, Despite, Even though, If

So, when you see one of these words at the beginning of your sentence, 90% of the time (when it's followed by an independent clause), you will need to use this little guy:

Ooops, I mean this one:

Mother Knows Best

As sure as you will go through a Led Zeppelin phase at some point in your teens, in your adult life, you will become your parents. This take over usually starts around the time you get your first apartment and little by little possesses your entire being. You'll open your mouth and out will come your mother's voice. You'll be having lunch with your dad and look across the table to find that you're both resting your left cheek on your left fist and tapping your right fingers on the table. You'll even start adopting their habits and ideals- even the ones that annoy the crap out of you. I bet you anything that to this day there is nary a wire hanger to be found in Christina Crawford's closet.

Well, I used to hate when my parents would answer one of my queries with a "because I said so."

Me: Dad, why can't I stay up and watch Dynasty?

Dad: Because I said so.

Me: Mom, why can't I play handball after dinner?

Mom: Because I said so.

But, here I go:

Don't put a comma before the word because.

Why?

Because I said so.

But, what about...

Don't talk back to me!

In my humble opinion....

...acronyms are stupid. I have never and will never type the letters LOL, unless perchance I am in the beginning stages of typing the word lollypop.



And, is it a coincidence that I have never watched Gossip Girl and this was their promo?
I think not.

Now, I don't hate all acronyms-just the ones that have been created because people are too lazy to write out entire words or want to imply the word fuck without saying the word fuck.

For example, I have fond memories of using acronyms for the birthday cards I made for my friends in the third grade that looked like this:

Super
Terrific
Excellent
Pretty
Happy
Awesome
Nice
Interesting
Extraordinary

And, how could I have made it through junior high yearbook signing without the three magic letters K.I.T?

And, there is no way I would remember all the colors in the spectrum without the handy ROYGBIV (Although, honestly, I've never had to rely on that knowlege too much in real life.)

And, now that I think about it, one acronym that has served me very well in the classroom is FANBOYS.

I know when we think of FANBOYS we think of this guy: The guy whose prized possession is his still-in-the-box Millenium Falcon. The guy you don't want to date because there's no way in hell you can compete with this:
But in English class it’s this very useful acronym:

For
And
Nor
But
Or
Yet
So

So, what's so useful about FANBOYS?

Well, you'll notice that and is one of the FANBOYS. Remember what the last post said about and:

We put a comma before and when it joins two sentences. For example,

Drew watched every episode of Star Trek, and he even knew how to speak Clingon.

And we don't put a comma when it doesn't have a complete sentence on both sides of it:

Drew watched every episode of StarTrek and learned Clingon.

Well, it's the same with the other six words. If one of the FANBOYS joins two sentences, we insert a comma before the FANBOYS, but if it doesn't have a complete sentence on either side, then we don't insert a comma. Here are a couple of examples:

Emma liked Drew a lot but decided to break up with him.

He was smart and cute, but it was just too weird that he called out the name Leia in bed.

He had even given Emma a snake armband for her birthday.

She could never bring herself to wear it, for she suffered from herpetophobia (the fear of reptiles, not herpes).

Don't Just Stick It Everywhere

I read somewhere that sometimes Matthew McConaughey gets so sexually aroused from food he has to stop eating. And, did you know that when Britney Spears checks into a hotel she uses the name Allota Warmheart? Somehow, these discoveries don't surprise me. However, sometimes I learn something about a person that seems totally out of character.

For example, the other morning my husband and I ran into a friend of ours. He’s a really nice guy, married, has a two-year old daughter he adores, and seems kind of shy. Now, I don’t know how we got on the subject, but I learned that back in his bachelor days he never left the bar alone. Here's the secret, Gentlemen: apparently, if you proposition over twenty women in one night, someone will go home with you. I just never took this shy family man for the Leon Phelps type:


But, when I thought about it, I realized that many of us take this same quantity over quality approach, especially with commas, especially before the word and. We stick a comma before every and we write and figure that eventually one will be correct.

We already talked about the optional comma before and: the one that goes (if you want it to) between the second to last item in a series and the and. In the following example, it's the comma between creamy and and.

Mmmm! This burrito is so spicy, warm, creamy, and tender.

But, not all commas before and are optional: some are required while some are forbidden. That's right- forbidden.

A comma is required before and if it joins two complete sentences. For example,

All you need is a bottle of courvoisier, and it really helps if you don't have any standards.

Let's break it down:

All you need is a bottle of courvoisier = complete sentence

It really helps if you don't have any standards = complete sentence

So, in other words, if you have a complete sentence on both sides of and, you must put a comma.

However, a comma before and is forbidden if it does not join two complete sentences. For example,

All you need is a bottle of courvoisier and no standards.

So, let's break this one down:

All you need is a bottle of courvoisier = complete sentence

No standards= not complete sentence

If you don't have a complete sentence on both sides of and, then no comma for you!

Who Gives a F##K?

Remember that poor kid who would get called on to read aloud in class and the class would collectively cringe? It would take him like fifteen minutes to make it through one tiny paragraph because he paused after every single word. Imagine if that guy inserted a comma every time he paused: his, sentences, would, look, like, this.

Yes, I’m officially on a rampage about the comma-when-you-pause theory. I mentioned in my last post that it’s a dangerous theory because sometimes when we pause we should be using different punctuation marks, but I was thinking about this last night (because that’s what I do while everyone else is watching American Idol auditions), and I realized that there’s so much more to the story.

As per my example above, one of my issues with blanketly (that might not be a word) stating that we insert a comma when we pause is that we don’t all pause in the same place- some of us may pause too much and some may pause too little. But, it’s even more than that.

I had this epiphany last night: the comma is not as much about creating a pause as it is about creating a separation. I know- it’s a lot to take in after associating the comma with a pause for so long. It’s like after having associated Daniel Radcliffe with innocent Harry Potter for so long, he ups and takes a role in a play as a dude with a weird thing for horses.














But, I realized that a comma is less like a rest stop and more like that rubber divider we put between our stuff and the stuff that belongs to the person behind us at the supermarket so, god forbid, we don’t end up paying for their gouda.

For example, we insert a comma between items in a list of three or more, not because we are so terribly exhausted after the first item, but because we need to separate the items so we know where one item begins and the next one ends.

For example, without commas, this sentence is very confusing:

I need to buy a leather whip cream silk sheets milk and cat food.

It’s difficult to tell where one item ends and the other begins. And, I’m not sure whether she wants to buy silk and sheets or silk sheets. So, Vanna, please get those commas for me:
I need to buy a leather whip, cream, silk, sheets, milk, and cat food.













Thanks.

That's interesting… I really thought it was going to be silk sheets.

But, we’re all pretty good at applying that rule. If there’s one place we confidently insert a comma, it’s between items in a series.

The only question that comes up is whether or not to put the comma before the and that separates the last two items (in this case, the one between cat and milk), which is referred to in the industry as the Oxford comma.

Because there are such compelling arguments on both sides, it’s still optional. Oxford comma opponents claim it creates confusion while proponents argue it reduces confusion, and they’re both right depending on the sentence. Proponents say it maintains the sentence’s cadence while opponents find it useless because the and already creates the necessary pause.

I say please never put me in a room with two people who are debating this issue. It seems as silly as discussing the future of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart when there are far more important issues in the world- like I hear Brad and Angelina are really through this time.

The Oxford comma is really the least of our comma issues. If you want to put it there, great; if you don’t, fantastic.

I’m with Vampire Weekend on this one: Who gives a F@#% about an Oxford comma?

American Libel

Commas are to punctuation what Ryan Seacrest is to entertainment: used for everything.

The other punctuation marks have two to three gigs, but the comma has landed a ton- probably because, like Seacrest, it’s small and cute.

But, as we know, popularity and success inspire rumors: gay rumors, gerbil rumors, cryogenically frozen rumors, insured body part rumors. Well, the comma has not escaped scandal. The biggest rumor spread about the comma (probably cooked up by some lazy grammar teacher who didn’t want to teach all the rules) is that we insert a comma whenever we pause. And, like all the rumors we want to believe (I’m still waiting for Tupac’s big comeback), everyone embraced it. But, unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

I wish it were that simple; it would make my job a hell of a lot easier. But, although we do pause when we see a comma, we shouldn’t use a comma every time we pause.

I’m going to use an excerpt from when Larry King interviewed Ryan Seacrest back in 2004 to show you how we incorrectly use a comma for pausing purposes. For this to work, we have to pretend that Ryan and Larry were writing notes back and forth to each other instead of speaking, and we also have to pretend that Ryan used the wrong punctuation (although, in what kind of sick world would a person achieve multi-millionaire status without a mastery of punctuation?).

So, anyway, someone called into the Larry King Show and asked Ryan (in writing…wink wink), “ In light of these gay rumors, are you dating anybody?”

And, Ryan responded

I am, I do have a girlfriend.

Now, Ryan was wrong to use a comma because it’s incorrect to use a comma between two complete sentences, and he wrote these two complete sentences:

1. I am. (It’s a short sentence, but it’s still complete: it has a subject, verb and completes a thought).


2. I do have a girlfriend.

Most of the time we insert a period after one complete sentence and then start the next one, and Ryan could have done that, but I can see why he didn’t want to. A period is so strong, so final. It cuts the sentences off from one another, and Ryan didn’t want to do that. He wanted to connect the fact that he was dating someone with the fact that that somebody was a female- immediately. Therefore, he used a comma, which doesn’t create quite as strong of a pause as a period.

But, he could have dispelled the rumors without resorting to grammatical incorrectness.

He could have used the semi-colon. Most of us have seen the ; but don’t really know when to use it.

Well, it comes in handy during times like these when we have written two sentences that we want to keep together, like these:

I am; I do have a girlfriend.

My partner’s name is Willy; it’s short for Willimina.

Of course I'm gay; gay means happy.