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.

Missed Periods

I am so grateful I’m not famous. How mortifying to have your romantic life on display for the world to see. Although, admittedly, having been married for six years, it would not be nearly as juicy:

WHY THEY
CAN’T FIND ANYTHING TO WATCH
FEELING BLOATED, MIDDLE CLASS, AND MARRIED
The nightmare of agreeing on a
show in the big world of Cable

And, by the way, what does US Weekly mean that these women can’t find love? Jennifer Aniston had Brad Pitt’s hottest years. Cameron was in a four-year relationship with my favorite ‘N Sync member and then dabbled in male models. Jessica was married, and didn’t she and Tony Romo just break up?

Geez! Do women have to be in love at all times? Relationships are tough. I think it’s important to take a break in between. If you rush into something, you might make poor choices:

Similarly, we can’t just rush from one sentence into another without a break in between. It can be tempting, but it’s not fair to your reader, and ultimately, it’s not fair to yourself because your reader will have a hard time understanding what you are trying to say. Here's an example of what happens when we do:

After a year of considering it, Cara finally broke up with her boyfriend Ben had no idea Cara wasn’t happy in the relationship.

So, what you just experienced, my friends, is an example of a run-on sentence. A run-on sentence is simply when two or more sentences are fused together without any punctuation:

Sentence 1- After a year of considering it, Cara finally broke up with her boyfriend.
Sentence 2- Ben had no idea Cara wasn’t happy in the relationship.

Run-ons can be long like the one we just experienced, or they can be short like this one:

Her timing was terrible he had just bought her an engagement ring.

Sentence 1- Her timing was terrible.

Sentence 2- He had just bought her an engagement ring.

So, why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to rush from one sentence right into the next without a break? Well, experts claim that we do this for several reasons: we may be in a hurry, we may be afraid to slow down lest we lose our momentum, or we may just be kind of lazy, but they warn that when we write under any or all of these circumstances, we may miss our periods. Yikes!

So, what do we do?

“Slow down,” experts recommend. They claim that when people actually proofread their sentences slowly and carefully, 90% of them realize that there needs to be a break in their run-on sentences.

However, experts warn, we must be careful. We tend to incorrectly insert a comma in such situations. So, before you just stick in a comma, you must ask yourself an important question: am I separating two complete sentences? If you are, then you can’t put a comma because a comma simply isn’t strong enough to deal with a sentence on each side. Two sentences need something stronger: they either need a period or a semi-colon.

So, when do we use a period and when do we use a semi-colon? Well, that, my friends, is really a question of whether our sentences are independent or codependent. Can our sentences stand on their own comfortably?

Or do they need each other to feel complete?

Here is an example of two codependent sentences that are best held together by a semi-colon rather than separated by a period:

I almost cried when Samantha broke up with Jared; he was so hot.

I didn't want to separate those two sentences with a period because the second sentence (he was so hot) really completes the meaning of the first; it tells why I almost cried.

Here's another one:

I also cried when Big and Carrie finally got married; they belong together.

What was that? Did someone just tell me to get a life?

That's totally something that Miranda would say.

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.