
Nobody. Understands. Punctuation. - hachiya
http://stilldrinking.org/nobody-understands-punctuation
======
saurik
> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision
> made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea.

I am more than happy to truly believe this premise (and if you read some of
the things I write, and how I use punctuation, I hope the reader will agree
;P), and can come up with situations where the extra comma "breaks the rythm"
and cases where it "makes the sentence".

> Momentum, syncopation, rhythm and pattern make a sentence flow, because
> writers are trying to transfer the voices in their heads into yours.

However, I simply can't bring myself to read this without speaking "rythm, and
pattern": the sentence is expertly crafted and frankly sounds amazing; but, if
I accept the author's premise that he really and truly carefully decided to
not put a comma there because he didnt want me to pause, the sentence sounds
horrible: in fact, this sentence sounds pretty un-lyrical to me unless I also
add a pause--yes, not one but two added commas--after "pattern", at which
point I would say it sounds downright _powerful_ ; I could, alternatively,
appreciate a smaller pause between "momentum" and "syncopation", which would
form a grouping that I think _almost_ sounds even better? (though which I have
a difficult time "performing"), but then we have to give up the first comma as
well: "momentum/syncopation, rythm and pattern, are"... I really would love to
hear the author read this sentence of the article out loud.

~~~
lmkg
Without the commas, it sounds to me like the author is excited and animated
about his topic, tumbling forward. I imagine him gesticulating wildly. I guess
you were imagining more of a measured pronouncement, with paused emphasis to
cause us to carefully consider each element. As he says, the punctuation
imparts different styles.

I think the tumbling-forward interpretation works better with the list having
four elements. They're meant to be a cumulative item, making his point as much
by the number of different elements as by the meaning of each individual one.
This style works better when it gives the impression of rushing.

~~~
YokoZar
I've read that sentence a few times now both imposing and not imposing the
imaginary comma in my head and it still sounds like either a mistake or a
particularly weird choice of rhythm.

Without an oxford comma, a four letter list sounds like "This...that...c and d
do that!" \-- which in turn sounds like naming two things, then making a
completely different sentence about the final two things. People don't talk
that way out loud when they mean to include the first two items in the list.

~~~
teamonkey
The pace of the sentence is accelerating, launching into the remainder of the
sentence.

Momentum - 3 syllables

Syncopation - 4 syllables

Rhythm and pattern - 5 syllables

~~~
anigbrowl
That's true, but that's also why it doesn't work. Think about the stress
patterns that actually constitute rhythm:

    
    
      momENtum, SYNcoPATion, RHYthm and PATtern  
      ___--___  ---__---___  ---___ ___ ---____
    

Nonomatapoeia, I fear.

~~~
teamonkey
I 'hear' only one stress in each.

moMENtum [beat] syncoPATion [beat] rhythm-and-PATtern [no beat so continues
straight on]

And all three patterns, including the beat, take the same time, with the
remainder of the sentence continuing at the same speed as PATtern.

~~~
Hello71
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rhythm](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rhythm):
/ˈɹɪ.ð(ə)m/

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pattern](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pattern):
/ˈpat(ə)n/ or /ˈpædəɹn/

~~~
teamonkey
I do have an English (UK) accent if that helps. But of course it's not unusual
to stress different syllables when reading poetry or prose for effect.

------
centro
I found this in the source of the page.

<!-- So this guy we just interviewed at my current job wrote this little
script to see if a product update for some company had come out. Every 10
seconds the script urllib'ed the page, checked the length of the html -
literally len(html) - against the length it was last time it checked. He wrote
a blog post about this script. A freaking blog post. He also described himself
as "something of a child prodigy" despite, in another post, saying he couldn't
calculate the area of a slice of pizza because "area of a triangle with a
curved edge is beyond my Google-less math skills." Seriously dude? I haven't
taken geomtry in 20 years, and pi*r^2/8 seems pretty freaking obvious.

The script also called a ruby script to send him a tweet which another script
was probably monitoring to text his phone so he could screenshot the text and
post to facebook via instagram.

I think the "millenials" \- who should be referred to as generation byte - get
undeserved flak, as all generations do, for being younger and prettier and
living in a different world.

But this kid calling himself a prodigy is a clear indication of way too many
gold stars handed out for adequacy, so to ensure that no such abominable
script ever does anything besides bomb somebody's twitter account, this
comment shows up exactly 50% of the time, and I encourage others to do the
same. \-->

Found my new favorite blogger; s'cept for PG.

~~~
30thElement
If that's what made him your favorite, you really need to read his earlier
post that really blew up in popularity. It's a great read.
[http://stilldrinking.org/programming-
sucks](http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks)

~~~
ssully
That just made my Sunday night. Another perk is it seems friendly enough to
show non-programmers, but I dont think they will appreciate it as much.

------
snowwrestler
I understand punctuation fine, and I think the author is wrong. While commas
in general are not governed by hard rules, the "Oxford comma" is an extremely
specific use of the comma: to separate the listing of 3 or more equal items.
There's nothing artistic about it; it's exactly the sort of situation that
simply needs to be consistent to be readable.

No offense to the author, who might be reading this, but it's possible to be
too proud of your writing history and cleverness. Many people have had English
teachers they loved, and any good writer has had a moment where they realized,
or were told, to throw out the rules.

It's essential to note that these moments always come in high school or
college or later, when kids already have more than a decade of writing
instruction under their belts. No one tells a second-grader to throw out all
the rules.

Because you're not actually supposed to throw them out. It's just a teaching
technique to break through bad writing habits.

~~~
vacri
On a tangent about consistency, I find it amusing when journalists slave
themselves to the rules and create silly sentences. The one I'm thinking of is
the convention that numbers under 10 are spelled out, and numbers 10 or higher
are put in numeral form. Some journalists abandon consistency to stick to the
'rules': "the policy is predicted to have payoffs in eight to 12 years". I
think I've even seen it in hyphenated form, too.

~~~
chinpokomon
The real reason for not using numerals is that in most typesets, and even how
we learn to write them, they look like capital letters. This causes the reader
to draw unnecessary attention to the numbers themselves in the same way which
ALL CAPS might. "The five of us went skiing," vs. "the 5 of us went skiing"
\-- the number of skiers isn't interesting, the activity is the important part
of that sentence and the number is secondary information.

The author of the article is right that writing is both a skill and an art
form. The skilled writer can alter the way a sentence is understood by their
choice of punctuation, but abandoning the rules should only be done when the
author understands the consequences of breaking those rules; using explicit
choices to guide the user to deeper understanding of the intended meaning.

"The policy is predicted to have payoffs in 8 to 12 years," "the policy is
predicted to have payoffs in eight to 12 years," or "the policy is predicted
to have payoffs in eight to twelve years." If I were writing that sentence, I
would probably go with the first style as I believe it is the best for
conveying what is important to the reader. All three say the same thing, but
mixing the spelt and numeral forms is the most distracting and least legible.

------
Stratoscope
Most of the time, you can use the Oxford comma, the non-Oxford comma or any
other kind of comma, and it just doesn't make any difference.

But sometimes you need it. Here's an example:

"There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things, cache
expiration, and off-by-one errors."

Take out the comma and you ruin the joke - at least to my ears:

"There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things, cache
expiration and off-by-one errors."

~~~
Hermel
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and
proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

"Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda
makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual
and tosses it over his shoulder.

"Well, I'm a panda," he says. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds
an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to
China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

~~~
MichaelDickens
This isn't actually a case of the Oxford comma, though--it's just incorrect.

~~~
iamdave
*points to the fourth sentence

The joke.

~~~
Kiro
Still not an Oxford comma.

------
marmarlade
I was never taught about the Oxford Comma (I'm not a native speaker), but
trained myself to use it consistently after seeing this
[http://jaced.com/blogpix/2013/washingtonlincolnoxford.jpg](http://jaced.com/blogpix/2013/washingtonlincolnoxford.jpg).

This has made me rethink though - he makes a great point that writing is about
transferring the voices in my head into the readers', so I'll keep that in
mind for any creative writing.

Heck, not just creative writing, I can think of more than one occasion where I
put an Oxford Comma in a press release even though it read better to me
without.

Thanks for sharing!

~~~
eCa
Consider though:

    
    
        To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God [1]
    

Is the writer's mother Ayn Rand?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_comma#Creating_ambiguity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_comma#Creating_ambiguity)

~~~
forgottenpass
Any use of commas in a list for something other than separating items,
regardless of Oxford comma, makes for ambiguous sentences. That one is just
written to make the Oxford comma a culprit. Try:

    
    
        To my mother, Ayn Rand, Jimmy, Bobbie and Sue.

~~~
JadeNB
> Any use of commas in a list for something other than separating items,
> regardless of Oxford comma, makes for ambiguous sentences.

I've always felt that the use of parentheses for grouping is under-explored:

    
    
        To ((my mother (Ayn Rand)) and God).
    

Of course, this conflicts with the well ingrained tendency to subconsciously
delete parentheticals, but, while pipe-dreaming, one could imagine different
marks:

    
    
        To {{my mother {Ayn Rand}} and God}.
    

I'm actually serious about my belief that this sort of thing is logically
sensible, but recognise its practical drawbacks ((a) everyone likes the visual
appearance of Lisp, right? and (b) everyone speaks Esperanto or Lojban because
of its logical primacy, right?).

------
steve_benjamins
Loved his points about how you can hear punctuation in speech:

"Morgan Freeman is liberal with the commas, and Jon Stewart is a master of
parentheses. Lewis Black made a career out of the exclamation point while
Dennis Leary barely uses any punctuation at all."

Overall, a great Sunday morning read.

~~~
Istof
it's a good point, but isn't that the point of punctuation?

~~~
YokoZar
A period is a good point.

------
Chattered
> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision
> made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea.

This is simply a run-on, not a use of an Oxford comma as I understand it. And
these bother me a lot.

"An oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice"

is a grammatically complete sentence. So is

"it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea."

Separate them by a strong punctuation mark. If you want the rhythm of a comma,
separate them by a semi-colon in preference to a stop. Semi-colons are made
for this.

~~~
DanBC
Several people in this thread are claiming that punctuation is used to convey
information about how to pronounce the sentence.

You're saying (and I tend to agree with you) that written punctuation is about
meaning, and not about where a speaker would pause to take a breath.

Can these two be kludged into a unified meaning? "Write better so that your
written words sound good when spoken"?

~~~
Chattered
I'm saying that punctuation has already solved this problem with the semi-
colon. If you have two sentences where the second follows the other so closely
that there is barely a breath in between, use a semi-colon rather than a stop.
You convey both meaning and flow at the same time, and you keep the
grammaticasters happy.

~~~
e12e
Ah, I love semicolons -- but they're not always as aesthetic as commas (and
vice-versa). I find this is mostly a question of overall style and context
(the more pretentious the text, the more out of place the semicolon; unless
you're aspiring to be a pretentious (post-)modern text -- then the semicolon
wins).

------
Camillo
The problem is that many people have horrible rhythm when speaking, too.
Telling them to just transfer that on the page results in horrible
punctuation.

------
dilap
Only tangentially related, but it's the weekend, so what the hell, enjoy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g)

~~~
notduncansmith
Knew it before I even clicked the link. They've gone a bit downhill since
their first album, but the first (on which this song appears) is a classic.

~~~
nightpool
Are you kidding me? I can pick 3 songs off of Modern Vamps that are better
then the whole first album combined. I would admit Contra is a little bit of a
hit and miss album, but not incredibly more so then the first one. I mean, who
actually listens to I Stand Corrected? Or M79? And Contra gave us Giving Up
The Gun, which is probably the second best VW song _ever_.

(The three songs by the way, if there was any doubt, would be "Hannah Hunt",
"Diane Young" and "Hudson" or "Step" depending on taste)

------
johnchristopher
This is really nice to have footnotes just next to the line there are called
from[0].

I rarely stumble upon a web page that actually improves on the paper format
but this one does.

[0] There must be a better way to phrase this.

~~~
ams6110
Except they're invisible if you have JS disabled, as I do for normal browsing.

~~~
Chris_Newton
A similar effect can be achieved using just CSS: float the marginal note left
or right, set the width and apply (negative) horizontal margins to move it
outside the main text block, and if required use relative positioning to shift
it up so the baselines of the body text and the marginal note align.

------
billpollock
Punctuation is about rhythm. Writing is about communication. And I start
sentences with "and" all the time.

I hardly know my grammar rules and I don't care. But I do care about making
sure that writing is clear.

That's the basic rule I've applied to the hundreds of books that I've edited.
Oxford comma. Huh?

------
gregoire
This article makes me think about a question to which I still haven't found an
answer:

For me (I'm not a native english speaker by the way), when reading out loud a
text, all commas are "translated" by a pause. But there are some sentences for
which I don't understand why a comma is used, as I wouldn't pause at the comma
when saying these sentences out loud.

For example:

> The problem is that many people have horrible rhythm when speaking, too.

or

> Thank you, John.

In both these sentences, when reading them out loud, I wouldn't pause where
there is a comma. And I actually never heard someone pause at these commas.

So am I mistaken in thinking that commas should always be orally translated by
pauses? Or do you pause at the comma when saying these sentences?

~~~
breadbox
It's a safe bet that any rule regarding English grammar that includes the word
"always" is either a) mistaken, or b) so obvious that you probably wouldn't be
questioning it in the first place.

Commas began life as indicators of pause, but in modern English they are
indicators of clause -- that is, they indicate grammatical structure. The
places where we don't normally use pauses to indicate structure in spoken
English (but still use commas in written English) are where you're noticing
the discrepancy. Specifically, it's a common practice that you should use a
comma to separate an adverb (like "too") from the rest of the sentence when
it's being used to modify the sentence as a whole. This isn't a struct rule,
and some people prefer a style of omitting such commas.

~~~
gregoire
Thank you for your explanation, I was not aware of the "comma to separate an
adverb" rule in written English.

------
afarrell
Half the time when I hear Barack Obama speak, I imagine his speechwriter
typing out ", and this nation cannot afford that<period><tab><tab><tab>So I
have been..." For every damn sentence.

------
ebspelman
If you have an hour and this topic really interests you, I'd recommend David
Foster Wallace's essay "Authority and American Usage" \-
[http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...](http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf).

He covers (very fairly and entertainingly, IMO) the major divide between
linguistic prescriptivists and descriptivists, and why both camps have a
point.

------
kyberias
Footnote number 2 is absolutely priceless.

~~~
Gracana
Footnote number two made me think this guy is awfully self-righteous and
obnoxious, and the weird defense of his beloved English teacher made me kind
of uncomfortable.

------
archagon
Is it just me, or does this guy sound a little like James Mickens, the
hilarious Microsoft blogger?
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2013/12/24/10484...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2013/12/24/10484402.aspx)

------
js2
The English teacher beginning his lesson with "So." reminded me of this piece:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22iht-
currents.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/us/22iht-currents.html)

(SO this is about the word “so.”)

------
mcclosdl
> Momentum, syncopation, rhythm and pattern make a sentence flow, because
> writers are trying to transfer the voices in their heads into yours.

Had to read this several times because the horrible punctuation made the
sentence unreadable without thinking.

------
Flenser
> Punctuation started with periods that told the speaker when to take a breath

A great book that looks at how punctuation characters date back to ancient
greek writing and how it was used to show how text should be read is Shady
Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EAA6QHC/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EAA6QHC/)

Edit: You can read the first chapter in the preview with pictures of the
ancient texts

------
lambda
Ouch. Fairly nicely written piece about punctuation, and generally nicely
formatted with justification, properly indented paragraphs, use of em dashes,
and so on; and then it uses straight quotes everywhere. While I'm generally
used to straight quotes everywhere on the web, the additional standard set by
the rest of the typesetting and the topic meant that their omission here was
that much more glaring.

~~~
Bud
The piece also asserted that "word" and "whirred" are "pronounced exactly the
same".

They aren't. The first consonant is different; IPA [w] vs. IPA [hw].

~~~
talideon
In a good number of English dialects [w] and [hw] have collapsed together.

~~~
groovy2shoes
Yep, to the point of /hw/ being considered comical by many speakers.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_wh#Wine...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_wh#Wine.E2.80.93whine_merger)

Edit: I just want to point out that despite what the map in the linked article
says, the merger is complete in most of the urban areas in the Southeast as
well. You'll usually only hear /hw/ in rural areas.

------
js2
_In this case, em dashes are doing something similar to a pair of commas,
which can also denote side info but they do it more casually, and
parentheses._

"and parentheses" what? And they are also like em dashes?

Edit: Thank you for the explanation folks. For whatever reason I found the use
of commas to denote the aside very difficult to parse. I think maybe it's
because of the first comma after "In this case."

~~~
bencoder
try:

> In this case, em dashes are doing something similar to a pair of commas
> (which can also denote side info but they do it more casually) and
> parentheses.

The commas after "pair of commas" are the parenthetical commas he is
describing

~~~
pests
I would have shown the example with em dashes instead of parentheses as that
was the point of the sentence.

------
peterashford
I enjoyed this essay immensely. I'm a bit of a pedant and a language geek (I
have a collection of favourite archaisms!) but my favourite saying about our
language is:

"English is a juggernaut truck: it goes on regardless"

I find it useful to say that to myself when I encounter some of the net's more
egregious assaults on the language. It's not an assault, it's the language
doing what it does.

~~~
_archon_
Have you published your list? I, for one, would like to peruse it.

------
Tloewald
As with most art forms, the key is to learn the rules and then how to break
them. Caring about minutiae like Oxford commas matters to people who know the
rules including many who don't know when to break them, but pedants who cling
to rules beyond their point of uselessness don't make the rules not worth
understanding.

------
mikeklaas
Nobody understands typography either. The sin of the article is setting text
justified without hyphenation.

------
bsilvereagle
> and give the teachers a few things to decorate with smiley faces and Xs

This little snippet made it pretty clear to me that the vast majority of my
teachers weren't educating, but ticking check-boxes on whether I had fulfilled
X,Y, and Z requirements.

------
coherentpony
This was a joy to read. I highly recommend reading it out loud to someone. Try
the techniques the author mentioned, and laugh out loud when he uses one of
the techniques ironically.

A wonderfully written piece of art. And excellently communicated, too.

------
feefie
I support the use of the Oxford comma because I love my parents, Cher and the
Pope.

------
RakshaC
On semicolon, this is a good read
:[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon)

------
shittyanalogy
Sure, the oxford comma is not important unless it is disambiguating. But let's
go meta and ask, Why do you care so much that people care? It's not like great
or even good writers are getting hung up on whether or not to use the oxford
comma. It's not like people loose jobs over the oxford comma.

Everyone with half a brain knows those rules are guidelines. Just like how you
shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition at. This post is the long form,
literary version of feeding the trolls.

------
Schwolop
Did I miss a joke right at the end, or was the whole essay demeaned by getting
could and couldn't wrong in the final sentence?

~~~
pdpi
I think you did miss a joke, or at least didn't parse the sentence correctly
(which probably negates his point in and of itself).

After a bit of clean up, it reads "If Yoda could make his point clear, nobody
should give a shit about Oxford commas."

~~~
Schwolop
Ah! I was parsing it as something like "If Yoda could give a shit about Oxford
commas, you shouldn't either." Which then lead to thinking it should have said
'couldn't' instead.

Cheers

------
kbar13
Punctuation abuse in Apple ad copy, actually the worst ever.

------
VeejayRampay
Ahhh English... The odd ghoti language.

------
spasquali
!

------
cinfinity
Stopped reading after footnote 2.

~~~
cpt1138
I did too. Couldn't figure out why that was even in there. It seemed so
ludicrously out of place but so intentional.

~~~
bsilvereagle
It reinforced the point of the whole essay.

------
cliveowen
In every case where you have to decide between two options and both have
advantages and disadvantages you should go with the popular one. In the case
of the Oxford comma this means following what most of the world (including the
publishing world) does and avoid it. The grammar of many languages forbids the
Oxford comma, so there's no reason to keep this controversy going on with no
real purpose.

