
The Art of Punctuation - tintinnabula
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/09/30/the-art-of-punctuation/
======
kevin_thibedeau
“Hopefully, the professor will be able to seriously take the work on which I
am presently engaged, which is, I believe, rather unique.”

"Hopefully" modifies "be" and is relocated to reflect colloquial speech
patterns. Banning split infinitives is a legacy of trying to bend English to
Latin grammar rules. "Presently" _is_ a synonym of "Currently".

Looks like a perfectly cromulent sentence to me.

~~~
yongjik
To me, "to seriously take" sounds strange not because it's split infinitive
(there's nothing wrong with that), but "seriously" is not just an ordinary
adverb here: it's a _complement_ of the verb _take_. "To take the work
seriously" is a very different thing from "to take the work," while "to engage
the work seriously" is basically the same as "to engage the work," except more
seriously.

And I don't think "seriously" (or a similar adverb), when used as a complement
of "take," could just move around freely. Just like you can't say "I away
chased the dog."

* And, while we're at it, it's a bad idea to take seriously (haha) anyone who thinks split infinitives are wrong. You can find tons of amusing writings by actual linguists here: [https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=Split+infi...](https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=Split+infinitive)

(Spoiler alert: they think the rule is BS.)

------
jkingsbery
> But if the meaning is clear, I would ask students, why bother eliminating
> these mistakes? The answer is because not to do so is to risk offending
> people who know better, the educated, a small group, to be sure, some would
> even say an endangered species, but one that tends to be touchy about such
> matters.

I think you should "follow the rules," not out of fear of offending someone
but because following these guidlines results in writing that is easier to
understand. Even when the "meaning is clear," it can be made more clear (and
have a greater result).

Compare

> Hopefully, the professor will be able to seriously take the work on which I
> am presently engaged, which is, I believe, rather unique.

with

> I hope the professor will take my unique work seriously.

~~~
goto_self
There's a common argument that the purpose of language is communication, that
mistakes don't matter if the desired information is communicated, and that
prescriptive rules for punctuation and grammar are merely pedantry.

However, that argument is self-defeating. The purpose of language is obviously
communication, yes. Mistakes might not hinder communication in some cases,
sure. The rules of grammar have changed throughout history and are somewhat
arbitrary, granted.

However, as the ideas one wishes to communicate become more complex,
abandoning the greater set of grammatical tools makes ones sentences more
difficult to read. I see this all the time in _professional environments_ of
all places. I frequently have to reread communications because someone was too
lazy to proofread.

And as for language changing through time? It does. But that's not carte
blanche for making whatever changes one wishes. Language change has to come
about by collective agreement, not by some cowboy who doesn't like grammatical
rules.

~~~
kmill
I try to operate under the principle of taking care to be clear with what I
say or write and to take care to understand what I hear or read. (It's the
human version of internet protocols or combinational logic levels.)

This is a very strong position if you care about trying to transfer thoughts
from one person to another, but there are two problems. The first is that the
people you are interacting with might not share the same protocol, which can
be frustrating (even with just slight variations in levels of effort), and the
other is that not all communication is about transferring thoughts.

Normative statements about how communication ought to occur, like whether one
needs to follow prescriptive rules, are akin to the way engineers debate an
API design. In the end, it is about setting a boundary that determines who has
to do what work. The more clear you are (and clarity can take quite a lot of
effort!) means less work for the recipient (which, if it is something you
think they must know, then it might be worth it). The more effort you put into
understanding someone means less work for the speaker/writer (which, if it is
something you want to know, then it might be worth it). Conflict arises when
there are different expectations, here like anywhere else -- for example, two
housemates with different expectations for cleanliness.

Many people believe at some level that if they say something, then the
utterance has exactly the meaning they intended it to have. This is despite
the fact that symbols have no inherent meaning, but rather they are
constructed to trigger something in the mind of the recipient. Such people
might actively resist answering any questions for clarification since they
believe they were clear enough and don't need to do any more work. They might
think the question comes from a place of pedantry since _they_ know what they
meant.

There are some people who don't care to be clear and don't care to figure out
what you are trying to say. Some people even add a bit of noise into their
interpreter if it's something they know they don't want to understand, for
whatever reason that might be.

When one person corrects or questions the speech of another, this is sort of a
side channel, communicating either "I want you to be clearer" or "I am taking
care to understand you." Unfortunately, there is not a good way to distinguish
between the two without knowing the person well enough. Lots of talking is
just to maintain a relationship of some kind, and highly precise language can
be inappropriate since sometimes all someone wants is to be heard, even if not
100% understood.

It's nice when two people know the channel model well enough, so to speak, to
be able to have high-bandwidth low-effort interactions.

~~~
goto_self
The high-bandwidth, low-effort interactions you're talking about might only
work with quick, two-way exchanges, as in a spoken conversation. In that
regard, I definitely have a weird English variant among friends. I enjoy the
broken English of so many memes.

There's an additional layer of language where you can switch to a different
variant of the rules as part of communication. Speaking in another register
defines the tone of the interaction.

But I'd still like to defend standard English as the default even in informal
groups, because the standard makes it readily accessible to many people and
ensures as much permanence as one can get from language.

All that said, I have one more flip-flopping disclaimer. I think some of the
rules agreed upon before are really dumb. Putting punctuation in quotation
marks if the punctuation is not from the quote is monstrous. I will not follow
that rule in any context.

------
0_gravitas
Relevant ([https://www.stilldrinking.org/nobody-understands-
punctuation](https://www.stilldrinking.org/nobody-understands-punctuation))

~~~
splittingTimes
Unrelevant, but still great:

[https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-
sucks](https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks)

~~~
zacym
Hilarious, and remarkably close to reality too, sadly.

------
alister
> _In 1927 in New Jersey, a man named Salvatore Merra was wrongly executed
> because of the want of a semicolon in a jury’s sentencing_

Here are the actual words that led to his execution:

"In the Merra case the dissenting justices pointed out that the jury's verdict
was originally recorded as follows:"

 _We find the defendant Salvatore Merra guilty of murder in the first degree
and the defendant Salvatore Rannelli guilty of murder in the first degree, and
recommend life imprisonment at hard labor._

"which was amended by the trial judge to read:"

 _We find Salvatore Merra guilty of murder in the first degree. We find
Salvatore Rannelli guilty of murder in the first degree and recommend life
imprisonment._ [1][2]

It does seem like an injustice happened here. The jury's verdict as originally
recorded is a little ambiguous, but to my mind, the recommendation of life
imprisonment would seem to apply to both. Although this doesn't seem like a
comma vs semicolon issue so much as a judge taking liberty to change the
wording and not clarifying the intention with the jury. The straightforward
thing to do during the appeal would've been to find the jurors and ask them
what they meant; I guess that wasn't (legally) allowed.

[1] [https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-
division-p...](https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/appellate-division-
published/1953/27-n-j-super-101-0.html)

[2] [https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3586846/state-v-
merra/](https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3586846/state-v-merra/) [from
the Supreme Court of New Jersey]

------
AlexCoventry
Despite decades of training, it still rankles me to use a bare apostrophe for
the possessive of a proper noun ("Moses'.") I've never pronounced it that way,
and neither has anyone else, that I've noticed.

------
zhte415
Relevant book: Eats, shoots and leaves

Amazon: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Lynne-
Truss/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Lynne-
Truss/dp/0007329067)

Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_%26_Leaves)

------
wahern
> “Hopefully, the professor will be able to seriously take the work on which I
> am presently engaged, which is, I believe, rather unique.” The meaning of
> the sentence is clear enough, though it contains four mistakes.

I don't mean to brag, but I got 0 of 4 on both the first, initial reading
_and_ the second reading. :)

~~~
mrob
Only 2 of those are valid. The battle against "hopefully" as a sentence adverb
was lost decades ago, and there was never a strong argument against split
infinitives.

------
surfsvammel
This remind me of the excellent read ‘Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct
Guide to Clarity and Style’, if you are interested in stuff like this. I
cannot recommend it enough. But, be warned, your friends and family might
think you have turned bonkers reading a “grammar book” voluntarily.

