Comma (mis) Usage and Other Punctuation Peeves

 This is a really handy link that does a good job of explaining the basic (and not so basic) rules of comma usage. It even discusses some of the negotiable ones, like the so-called Oxford comma.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-reinalda/confused-by-the-comma_b_5635688.html

As an aside, commas seem to cause more problems for writers than all the other punctuation marks put together. I'm guessing this is because commas have more uses than all the punctuation marks put together. I don't know if grammar and punctuation are really getting worse overall, or if people have always been terrible, but the internet certainly makes it easy for people to display their ignorance. I generally try to not correct people on social media or internet forums, because there's usually a karmic comeuppance in store when one does this. It's always amusing to see someone taking another person to task for a specific grammar error when they've committed that same error (or a different one) in their own post.

It's pretty common for people to blame teachers for this sort of thing. I teach college biology, and anecdotally, I think your typical college (or even university) freshman has always been pretty bad at grammar and spelling. The majority had to take the infamous "English A" back when I was at UC Davis. I do think certain kinds of spelling and grammar errors are more common than they used to be, but I don't know that it's fair to say it's because "they don't teach this in school anymore." There has been a lot of grade inflation in the public schools (high school GPAs are, on average, higher than they were when I was young), and a higher percentage of the population attempts college, at least, than once did. We also have a lot of English learners in our community college student population. So even without the internet, these things will change the demographics, and create and apples and oranges dichotomy between the college students of yesteryear and today.

Plus, US society does not, in my opinion, value knowledge, or even the appearance of having knowledge, for its own sake. Ask the average person why they're in college, and they'll tell you, "To get a degree that lets me get a good job," not, "To become educated or become a better, more informed citizen and to develop skills that will allow me to embark on a lifetime of intellectual and professional growth and learning."

We like to laugh at people who "use big words," or "talk too smart."

But I digress.

I've been thinking about some of the things I run across fairly often that are serious pet peeves for me.

1. Misuse of apostrophes in plurals that aren't possessives or contractions. Just don't do this. Please. "Possessive's or contraction's." Whimper.

2. The possessive form of it with an apostrophe. It's=a contraction for "it is." Just as you don't use apostrophes for his or hers, you don't use them for its in this context. It's amazing how many professional web sites do this. We all make occasional typos, but when someone uses it's as a possessive throughout, it's pretty clear they never learned that rule back in school, and they haven't been observant in their daily life to pick up the correct usage.

3. Incorrect dialog tag punctuation and capitalization. When someone says something, you use a comma.

Bob said, "It's really very simple."

or

"It's really very simple," said Bob (I actually would prefer Bob said there, but "I did it this way to show how said shouldn't be capitalized here).

4. Using a word that really can't be "spoken" as a dialog tag instead of an action that occurs immediately before or after a spoken sentence.

For instance:

"It's really very simple," Bob coughed.

instead of.

"It's really very simple." Bob coughed.

5. Incorrect use of semicolons. Unless you are constructing "smileys" in a forum post or text message, these little puppies have two uses: separating two independent clauses within a sentence that lacks a coordinating conjunction (and, but, so etc.), or for separating the elements of a list when the list elements themselves contain commas.

Some people love dogs; other people fear them.

or

I have been to the beach in California, the Pacific Northwest, and Maine; to the mountains in California, Oregon, and Colorado; and to the desert in California, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Notice that the punctuation mark I used after "these little puppies have two uses" is a colon (:), not a semicolon.

6. Misusing the term "run on sentence" to generically refer to any long sentence. Run ons are, in particular, sentences that need a coordinating conjunction (with comma), or a semicolon, regardless of their length.

My dog hates my neighbor's dog they always fence fight.

This is a run on, because it needs a semicolon between "dog" and "they."

Or you could just write:

My dog hates my neighbor's dog, so they always fence fight.

It is possible to have a very long sentence that is not a run on. The issue is whether or not it contains independent clauses that are mashed together without appropriate punctuation.

7. Okay, this isn't a grammar or punctuation error, per se, but a spelling one. But here goes.

Loose and lose. They are two different words, people. They're not even homophones. This one seems to be proliferating like mold lately. I honestly don't remember getting e-mails or reading student papers that made this mistake until a few years ago, but now I see it all the time. Even on writers' forums. I really don't know what gives.

It is sometimes good for a giggle. When someone writes, "I'm always loosing my keychain," I imagine her tossing her keys up in the air and shouting, "Be free, little fob!"

8. Here's one that's a bit more obscure, maybe: fewer versus less. You use fewer for items that can be quantified exactly (as in counted), while you use less for grammatically single nouns described in relativistic quantities. For instance, you'd say, "There is less money in my wallet since I had kids," but, "There are fewer bills in my wallet since I've had kids."

I think this one is hard, because a similar distinction doesn't really exist for the analogous quantitative word "more." There is the "many" versus "much" distinction, however.

Okay, I've ranted a bit. Does anyone have "favorite" grammatical or punctuational peeves of their own?

Those awkward, dangly sentence bits--misplaced modifiers.

Spring fever is in full swing, and I haven't been feeling terribly inspired to blog lately. I've been rewriting and revising my novel (I really hope for the last time) and wrapping up another semester of biology labs. But one thing I've been thinking about as I comb my manuscript for awkward turns of phrase and repetitive sentence structures are dangling (or misplaced) modifiers.

Modifiers are words, phrases or clauses that add description to a noun or pronoun without changing the core meaning of a sentence. In logically constructed sentences, the modifier is most often adjacent to (either before or immediately following) the noun it modifies.

The dog, a Dalmatian, growled at me.

Bored with tonight's episode, Susan changed the channel.

Hungry, Fred made a sandwich.

Modifiers have the potential to create confusion, as this example from my own manuscript illustrates:

Danior sat at the table, the man from Jarrod's nightmares.

Okay, I know what I meant when I wrote it. But as the sentence is constructed, it means that the table is the man from Jarrod's nightmares. This really doesn't make sense, as my world's magic system does not incorporate transmutations between animate beings and inanimate objects.

Fortunately, it's not hard to reword this sentence to read:

Danior, the man from Jarrod's nightmares, sat at the table.

By moving the descriptive clause (the man from Jarrod's nightmare) closer to the subject (Danior), we eliminate the issue.

Sometimes dangling modifiers can produce pretty hilarious results.

Here's another:

Freshly painted, Tom left the walls to dry.

Hmmm, is Tom freshly painted?

Flying over the plains in a helicopter, The herd of bison was vast.

That's one talented herd of Bison...

Or here's one that really could engender some misunderstanding:

I wrote a report on sexual harassment in my office.

The following sentence (though still awkward in my opinion) would be far less likely to get me in trouble:

In my office, I wrote a report on sexual harassment.

The frustrating thing about dangling and misplaced modifiers is that writers tend to be pretty close to their own work. We all know what we mean, and so illogical sentence constructs can sneak past our proofing. When the results are completely illogical or amusing, the reader will likely pick up on the sentence's true meaning (though he or she will likely be jolted from your story, and have a good chuckle at your expense). But there are times when the meaning of the sentence is changed into something logical but unintended.

The woman was walking the dog wearing a miniskirt.

This sentence suggests that the dog was wearing the miniskirt. Now, this may seem absurd to some, but in fact, a quick trip to Petsmart will show that some people do like to dress their dogs.  If it is actually the woman who is wearing the miniskirt, a better construct might be:

The woman wearing a miniskirt walked the dog, or The woman, wearing a miniskirt, walked the dog.

Also notice how the first example (sans commas) makes the woman's miniskirt an integral part of her description. She is the woman wearing the miniskirt. That's who she is. The second one makes the miniskirt seem like sort of an "extra" thing about her. She is a woman who just so happens to be wearing a miniskirt in this instance. It's something she's doing in addition to walking the dog.

Although this is not the main point of my little piece here, it does illustrate the role of even those "optional" commas in clarifying the meaning of a sentence.

Another way of writing the sentence: The woman walked the dog while wearing a miniskirt. This really shifts the emphasis to the act of wearing a miniskirt, to the point where it becomes the focus of the sentence (as if, perhaps, walking a dog while wearing a miniskirt is unusual in this particular setting or situation).

Misplaced modifiers are an example of why it is important to put your story or chapter down for a while and come back to it to read with "fresh eyes."

Unless you enjoy giving your beta readers an unintended chuckle.

Contractions

Bob said, "I am going to go and find out what we will be doing tomorrow. Then I will tell Marjorie that she will have to come with us."

"Let us do that," answered Beth. "She has always been helpful."

What's missing from this dialog (besides anything interesting)? Contractions! Nearly all of us use them (or 'em) when we talk. Most of us use them when we write as well. But there still seems to be a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the actual appropriateness/acceptability of their use.

It always seemed like a no-brainer to me to use contractions in dialog, since people use them when they speak. I tend to use them in narrative as well, unless I'm shooting for a very formal tone. I tend to write my stories in first or limited (tending towards deep) third person, so my narrative is written (or at least attempts to be) written in the pov character's voice. Unless there is a reason the pov character wouldn't use contractions, their absence feels a bit strange to me.

But budding writers often avoid their use, even in dialog. Some say it's because their grammar checkers have trained them not to use contractions. Others explain that their English teachers place their use on the same moral level as the torture of puppies. Still others claim they've heard that editors will summarily reject any fiction manuscript with contractions.

The grammar checker argument is easy to set aside, since grammar checkers are clearly designed by rabid squirrel monkeys who want to derail the human race's use of language. As for the English teacher argument, one must remember that teachers are training students to write very formal non fiction, and students tend to interpret the guidelines given in that context as immutable rules (even though, as stated above, these rules are changing, even in formal writing).

The comment that fiction editors hate the use of contractions is the only argument that bears investigation. I haven't had any conversations with professional editors on this topic, so I pulled several of my favorite fantasy books from my shelves and looked at their dialog. I found tons of contractions (and some in the narrative as well). Still, it's possible that the books on my shelf are an atypical subset of the population of published works.

So, I went to the web and did a little research. As it turns out, it's becoming increasingly acceptable to use the common English contractions in business correspondence and in technical writing, so long as they improve the flow and rhythm of the writing and convey the desired tone and voice (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/contractions.aspx ; http://idratherbewriting.com/2008/06/26/myths-myths-myths-about-technical-writing/ ; http://brucemayhew.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/using-contractions-in-business-communication/).

This does not mean, of course, that different editors or publications don't have their own preferences or in-house styles (or that all readers will find a business letter with contractions more readable and friendly), but it does suggest that there is no hard and fast rule against using them anymore, even in formal writing.

So what about fiction? I did some more searching and found two different opinions about what the "rules" are, though all of these writers/editors agreed that rules in writing are often broken to good effect.

1. They're desirable in spoken and internal dialog, but not in narrative.

(http://riyria.blogspot.com/2011/08/writing-advice-10-dialog.html; http://www.spawn.org/editing/askthebookdoctor18.htm).

2. They're desirable in spoken and internal dialog and entirely permissible in narrative as well, so long as it suits the voice and style of the writer or pov character.

(http://writingclearandsimple.com/2011/02/21/ask-an-editor-contractions-in-a-novel-manuscript/; http://suite101.com/article/understanding-basic-grammar-a159145).

I suspect the differences in opinion over whether it's appropriate to use contractions in third person narrative are probably influenced by one's attitude towards a truly deep/immersive third person pov and the use of a more causal authorial voice in modern writing. It is entirely possible that editors have different opinions here.

But in spite of what many newer writers claim, it doesn't seem like there's any controversy over contraction use in dialog. As a rule, dialog will sound stilted and formal without them, so unless you are intentionally creating a context where a character is not using them for a clear reason, sprinkle in the standard English contractions.

Colloquial contractions (such as ain't) can also be used in dialog, of course, if  it's appropriate for the character and setting.

Sometimes an author may use a situational or made-up contraction to indicate that a speaker is hurried or being careless in his speech. gonna, 'fraid, etc. are examples of these. Be sure these are being used in a way that's appropriate and are not overused to the point of rendering the character's speech incomprehensible or annoying to read.

When should contractions be avoided?

1. When they actually make the sentence more cumbersome to read/speak.

2. Faux historic speech that is not well-researched and actually appropriate for the overall setting or voice for the characters or narrative.

3. When there's a plausible reason a character wouldn't be using contractions. I can think of two books I've read in recent months that avoid contraction use in at least some contexts, and both of them worked quite well. But they are the exception to the rule.