PianoTuna
Re: Punctuation
Sorry about the delay. Something came up over the weekend that needed a truck.
"Punctuation tells us when to breathe." is what I need. I have trouble with the rules. A comma is a pause, but not every pause gets a comma, and some commas come where there isn't a pause, like "Hartford, Connecticut". Good so far. It's the commas for grammar and logic where I get into trouble. I can't tell how far to believe the books. That's not my usual. I like to read up on things. Best thing I ever learned is if you want to find out about something, there's probably somebody out there who wants to tell you all about it. Usually they wrote the owner's manual. It makes me nervous to be disagreeing with reference books when I'm just starting out.
For instance, "His wife Sharmayne up and left him, taking his truck and heading for New Jersey." The books and I agree that there has to be a comma after "left him", because otherwise you'll think she left him while he was taking his truck, and you won't be sure who's heading for New Jersey. Some people have told me that there should be a comma following "truck", which is wrong because "taking his truck and heading for new Jersey" is one action not two. But what gets me is saying that there should be a comma on either side of "Sharmayne" because an appositive. That's just plain wrong. If you said "His wife, the Mayor of Casterbridge, up and left him, taking his truck and heading for New Jersey," fine. That needs commas. But what about "A week after Frank lost his lucky penny, his dog died, his truck spontaneously combusted, and his wife the former Miss America runner-up left him for a local TV news personality"? Commas after "wife" and "runner-up" ruin the whole thing.
Here's another one. "He hit a good line drive but then he ran towards third base, so we could see he had a ways to go before he made it into the Major Leagues." How important is it to have a comma following "drive" because you have two independent clauses separated by a conjunction? Is it a clear mistake not to have one? Or is it that most independent clauses separated by a conjunction naturally have more of a pause than that?
How about "Sharmayne of course had no idea how to open the tool chest, so she just parked the truck in her cousin's back yard until the smell faded." Is it a mistake not to have commas on either side of "of course"? The books say "of course" is an interruption in the main thought, but it seems to me that sometimes it isn't. They also say that "for the life of me" is an interruption in the main thought, and logically maybe it is, but in real life no one ever pauses before and after they say it: "I cannot for the life of me see what Sharmayne thought she was doing with that swimming pool repairman." I wrote something out that had those commas in it and tried it on some readers. They were all confused and said I'd done the commas wrong.
I thought about sending a letter to the author of that punctuation book asking how many books he buys per year. If it isn't too many, I'm willing to risk losing him.
Semicolons are a longer pause. I think it's the kind where the voice in the part just before the pause ends by dipping down very briefly, then curling back up again and stopping short. Before colons, the voice makes one sharp drop at the end, and the pause is longer. This is probably an inadequate rule, but so far it's working.
Sorry about the delay. Something came up over the weekend that needed a truck.
"Punctuation tells us when to breathe." is what I need. I have trouble with the rules. A comma is a pause, but not every pause gets a comma, and some commas come where there isn't a pause, like "Hartford, Connecticut". Good so far. It's the commas for grammar and logic where I get into trouble. I can't tell how far to believe the books. That's not my usual. I like to read up on things. Best thing I ever learned is if you want to find out about something, there's probably somebody out there who wants to tell you all about it. Usually they wrote the owner's manual. It makes me nervous to be disagreeing with reference books when I'm just starting out.
For instance, "His wife Sharmayne up and left him, taking his truck and heading for New Jersey." The books and I agree that there has to be a comma after "left him", because otherwise you'll think she left him while he was taking his truck, and you won't be sure who's heading for New Jersey. Some people have told me that there should be a comma following "truck", which is wrong because "taking his truck and heading for new Jersey" is one action not two. But what gets me is saying that there should be a comma on either side of "Sharmayne" because an appositive. That's just plain wrong. If you said "His wife, the Mayor of Casterbridge, up and left him, taking his truck and heading for New Jersey," fine. That needs commas. But what about "A week after Frank lost his lucky penny, his dog died, his truck spontaneously combusted, and his wife the former Miss America runner-up left him for a local TV news personality"? Commas after "wife" and "runner-up" ruin the whole thing.
Here's another one. "He hit a good line drive but then he ran towards third base, so we could see he had a ways to go before he made it into the Major Leagues." How important is it to have a comma following "drive" because you have two independent clauses separated by a conjunction? Is it a clear mistake not to have one? Or is it that most independent clauses separated by a conjunction naturally have more of a pause than that?
How about "Sharmayne of course had no idea how to open the tool chest, so she just parked the truck in her cousin's back yard until the smell faded." Is it a mistake not to have commas on either side of "of course"? The books say "of course" is an interruption in the main thought, but it seems to me that sometimes it isn't. They also say that "for the life of me" is an interruption in the main thought, and logically maybe it is, but in real life no one ever pauses before and after they say it: "I cannot for the life of me see what Sharmayne thought she was doing with that swimming pool repairman." I wrote something out that had those commas in it and tried it on some readers. They were all confused and said I'd done the commas wrong.
I thought about sending a letter to the author of that punctuation book asking how many books he buys per year. If it isn't too many, I'm willing to risk losing him.
Semicolons are a longer pause. I think it's the kind where the voice in the part just before the pause ends by dipping down very briefly, then curling back up again and stopping short. Before colons, the voice makes one sharp drop at the end, and the pause is longer. This is probably an inadequate rule, but so far it's working.