Tuesday, 31 May 2011. Verse for today.
“The big final rule for the comma is one that you won’t find in any books by grammarians. It is quite easy to remember, however. The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person.”
Today’s Daily Office Lectionary lessons from Deuteronomy and Psalms are about rules and what happens to those who do not keep the commandments of God. It is not a pretty picture. But here at my writing place is my calendar for the day, which has a more appealing rule.
In my Navy office exactly fifty years ago was a well-meaning and enthusiastic chief petty officer whose job as my office manager included drafting official letters for my signature, or for the signature of the commander who was my boss, or for the captain who was commanding officer of the naval station. Chief Cook was a good soul in most respects. However, his every letter draft was an English professor’s nightmare: not lightly peppered with commas, but heavily Tabasco-ed with the little squiggly things. So terribly spiced in fact as to constitute blatant disobedience to the comma commandment of Lynne Truss. In Bible times the penalty would have been stoning.
Cook’s Comma Spice Soup
For anyone, who enjoys writing, there is, always, the question, with punctuation, especially with commas, whether to disobey Lynne’s rule, and show ignorance, or, to follow the rules blindly, like some troll, or, to leave out most of them, in defiance.
Let whoever is without grammatical error cast the first stone.
Whether it be rules of English composition, Navy regulations, or Church canons, my preference is generally to ignore them.
There is plenty of religious stuff to write about later this week. As for now, looking at the calendar this morning my mind is on Lynne Truss, her amphibology Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and the terrible pain of not being able to stop laughing long enough to catch my breath during my reading of her book years ago.
A panda walks into a cafe. 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.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "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."
A panda walks into a cafe. 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.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "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."
Tom+ in +Time