Wednesday, January 23, 2013

On pedantry, ambiguity[,] and the Oxford comma

From linguistics graduate student Joe Kessler's blog, Language Hippie:
"My opinion is that you should use whichever style you prefer in your own writing, but also that you shouldn't judge other people for using a different one in theirs. But if you're going to get into an argument with someone over the relative merits of the Oxford comma or its absence, make sure you have the facts on your side: neither style is inherently less confusing or more straightforward than the other. It's all just just a matter of personal preference, or what the writer thinks will be most effective in a given sentence."

Why Tim Tebow still uses the Oxford comma

From Troy Bolton of the Sports Casual blog:
Poster credit: www.sportscasualblog.com

Comment by Sports Casual blog reader "B", March 13, 2012:
 "Tebow may very well be the son of God and every time he kneels he's just calling home."

'Don't kill the Oxford comma' by Salon.com

Image credit: Salon.com

From Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon.com:
"Grammar lovers today (June 30, 2011) were saddened, shocked, and mightily displeased at the news that the P.R. department of the University of Oxford has decided to drop the comma for which it is so justly famed. As GalleyCat reported, the university’s new style guide advises writers, 'As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’.' Cue the collective gasps of horror. The last time the nerd community was this cruelly betrayed, George Lucas was sitting at his desk, thinking, 'I shall call him Jar Jar.'"

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

MittWit: Why don't airplane windows open?

This, apparently, was MittWit's sick idea of a joke. Either that, or he's signaling the 1 percent, via some upper-crust "classist" code, how disdainful he remains of the 47 percent, who he imagines are so stupid that they actually believe that "rolling down" airplane windows to let in "oxygen" - when there isn't enough oxygen to breathe at airplane cruising altitude - would prevent the passengers from asphyxiating from smoke inhalation, rather than sucking them out the open windows into freefall.

Rachel Maddow said on her show tonight that Romney couldn't possibly have been joking, because no one would joke about his wife's having narrowly missed dying in an airplane fire, especially with her standing beside him on stage. No one else would, perhaps, but rMoney isn't above using just about any currency - including his own wife's safety - to buy himself a few more votes.

That Willard is a hoot, isn't he? He tells such awful "jokes" so badly that no one can tell whether he's joking, lying, or mocking other people, if he believes what he's saying, or if he's simply at a loss for words and blurts out whatever random, inane thought pops into his head when he's caught off-guard by a question.

Rachel burst his bubble, though, when she asked her viewers, "Didn't he ever see 'Goldfinger'?''