July 2015

MELLOW & GREY : Life’s been great, but the sun is at 30-deg elevation; twilight looms large!

And now, back to business….

Today’s topic is  about punctuating sentence:

The strongest punctuation mark is the period or “full stop” (which is perhaps on par with the exclamation mark and the question mark). The next is the semi-colon; and finally comes the comma. By ‘strong’ here we mean influence on the cadence of your reading, especially your pauses and intonation in oration. When do you use which one?

I’ve read classic books in which an author wrote very long paragraphs (sometimes running to a dozen lines or longer), broken into segments with just commas. Many equally masterful writers would throw several semi-colons into such passages, so as to group the segments into batches that seem to flow better. I have also read good writers who cut such passages into very short sentences with periods and periods and periods. It is to some extent a matter of your preferred style. What one should avoid is pouring on a glut of words without adequate punctuation except perhaps the occasional use of conjunctions (‘and,’ ‘but,’ ‘however,’ etc.). A reader tires of such writing, or begins to stumble, easily.

The Comma for Clarification
One magazine ad for a diabetes medicine was worded as follows: Diabetes destroys nerves which may cause pain.” A casual reading of that sentence could lead to a conclusion that is the direct opposite of what the ad intended. To understand the sentence we must determine the antecedent of “which.” (The antecedent of a word in a sentence is a preceding word or phrase to which it refers. If I say “I read a book and I enjoyed it,” the antecedent of “it” is “book.”)

So, in that ad, what is the antecedent of “which”? In other words, what is causing the pain? If nerves cause pain, then diabetes is doing a good deed by destroying them to stop pain! But we know that is not true: destruction of nerves is what causes pain. So, diabetes is doing a bad deed by destroying nerves and thus causing pain. What the advertisers meant to say is best rendered with a comma after “nerves.” (“Diabetes destroys nerves, which may cause pain” is the correct sentence.) Thus, a comma after “nerves” inverts the meaning of the sentence.

The stakes in the use of the comma can be much higher than mere nerve pain. Consider the serial comma. It is a comma in a special role: it comes before the final member in a list of denoted items. For instance, in the sentence, (1) “Divide a chocolate bar equally between Mary, Paul, and John” that last comma is the serial comma. Its use is seriously declining in the USA, and most writers now omit it altogether.

Suppose a zillionaire bequeaths his estate “to be divided equally between my three sons Tom, Dick and Harry.” It used to be argued that such a man was instigating a probate battle in his family because, if Tom retained a clever lawyer, he could obtain half of the state, leaving the other half to Dick and Harry. (That is equal division between two the parties delineated by the comma.) These days, however, each son might get a third of the estate, with or without a serial comma after Dick. But, yes, a fortune could depend on that second comma! Lawyers excel in tweaking out (and exploiting) minutiae like that. If you have a clever daughter and give her a chocolate bar to share equally with her brother and sister, be sure to use a serial comma!

The Hyphen
Take the hyphen, too, which is all but extinct now. It is hard to make any sense of the following sentence: “We buy demand and supply statistics to predict sales.” Now insert two hyphens (one on either side of the word “and”) and the meaning comes into focus.

The Parentheses
In an earlier essay on this site (The Period and he Parenthesis, May 2015) we saw that a pair of parentheses functions in such a manner that, if you threw away the pair and everything inside it, the sentence that remains would retain its integrity without needing any adjustment. That clarification resolved the question of whether a period should be placed before or after the closing parenthesis: A sentence that begins after the opening parentheses should end inside, with the period placed before the closing parenthesis; conversely, one that begins before the opening parenthesis should end outside, i.e. after the closing parenthesis.

Marks for “Heads-Up”
It is a pity that English does not employ an inverted question mark to start off a sentence that is in the interrogative mood as Spanish does (or an inverted exclamation mark for the imperative mood) to give the reader a ‘heads-up’ that what follows calls for an adjustment of intonation. I find I sometimes must get to the end of a long sentence before I realize I have read it with the wrong inflexion.

The colon ( : )
This punctuation mark serves so many different purposes in written English that it is hard to explain all of them exhaustively. As a good approximation, Wikipedia says the colon “is used to explain or start an enumeration” (of a category); it also has other uses, but let us concentrate on its main use (as stated by Wikipedia).

The colon is included here because of my experience with “experts” (editors & reviewers) who have stated rather incorrect or incomplete views on what must follow a colon. In its role of enumerating/elaborating examples, a colon may be followed by: a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, or a full paragraph. (Note the use of the colon in the preceding sentence.)

If what follows your colon is a list, it is less confusing if the items on that list are consistently in the same format — all of them being single words or phrases, or clauses, or sentences — (rather than mixtures of the different categories).

Bullets
The practice of delineating a list with “bullets” is relatively new (corresponding roughly with the emergence and supremacy of the PC as a tool for composition of writings); but it can be more tidy and helpful. As with a colon, it is useful to ensure that the items of individual bullets are in the same format. For instance, if the first bullet is a single word, subsequent bullets may be single words or short phases, but not complete sentences.

Beyond that, how to end the item on each bullet (with a comma, semi colon, or period) follows the normal rules of punctuation. If it is a sentence, it has to end with a period; if a word, with a comma; and if a phrase or a clause, with a semi colon — especially if that phrase/clause is long or complex enough to require other punctuation marks within it.

Life’s Lessons Learned

In the first article at this blog site we made the point that “The American gusto for improvisation fosters innovation….” So far we have discussed a few “undesirable” innovations which we think may be attributed to US influence. However, there are also American changes (by which we can only mean changes during this age of American supremacy) that, one thinks, have rather facilitated ease of expression in English. A useful language is a living creation and so it must evolve with time. In contrast, the Latin sentence structure, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary that I studied in high school were unchanged from Cicero and Virgil thousands of years before my time; being fossilized in that manner may be one reason Latin is dead!

As we celebrate our independence this July it is fitting at this point to “celebrate” some of those beneficial changes in English that may be due to US influence. I expect some readers can point out more such changes (and if we disagree with them we can at least debate the point!). So, please weigh in with your comments. Just remember that our focus is on written (not colloquial) English.

We saw an example of this kind of positive change under a blog in this series entitled A FEMALE MAN. The example in question is the use of a plural pronoun (‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘their’) to refer to a singular subject/object, as a neater alternative to employing the clumsier phrase: “he or she” (or, as the case may be, “him or her”). Thus, we now say “If anyone disagrees let them speak their mind,” instead of the more correct but rather repetitive construction: “If anyone disagrees, let him or her speak his or her mind.”

PLACING A PREPOSITION
In my high school days you were not permitted to end a sentence with a preposition. In those days, you could not say “This is the house I was born in”; you had to say “This is the house in which I was born.” It took the singular authority of Sir Winston Churchill to make the tidier version (“…house I was born in…”) acceptable; now we all use it. Another useful simplification made acceptable by Churchill is “This is me…” instead of “This is I….” Those two examples are mentioned by the renowned linguist Charles Berlitz in his book, NATIVE TONGUES. (BTW, Berlitz holds the interesting view that as a language matures and spreads its reach, it also acquires simpler structure and becomes less likely to differ in form as you go from one place to another. The emergence of local variations is of course what produces dialects, which may in turn become distinct languages eventually.)

SPLIT INFINITIVES
A similar “No-no” that existed in my day but not anymore is splitting the infinitive. The last sentence in the mission statement of Star Trek is: “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” However, in the generation before Star Trek, that sentence would have been considered ungrammatical. Why? Because “boldly” appears between the two parts of one verb that is in the infinitive tense: “to go.” In other words, that Star Trek mission statement split the infinitive. The accepted formulation then would have been: (1) “Boldly to go…” or (2) “To go boldly.” Note that in this particular example all three versions of that sentence are equally concise. In some cases, however, the proper sentence structure becomes less tidy if we cannot split the infinitive. Let’s see one such case.

Consider the sentence: “It is important to review all available evidence before you judge.” The infinitive here is “to review,” and because it is a transitive verb it has an object (which happens to be not just one word but an entire phrase: ‘all available evidence”). If we must emphasize the need for carefulness in considering the evidence, we can now say: “It is wise to carefully consider all available evidence….” But in my youth that infinitive (to consider) could not be split, and the proper construction was (1) “It is wise carefully to consider all available evidence…” (with the adverb before the infinitive), or (2) “It is wise to consider all available evidence carefully …”(with the adverb coming long after the infinitive).

The lesson here is: Splitting the infinitive can make a sentence more concise and compact.

THE ADVERB
I keep referring to my high school days because my formal education in non-scientific topics ended there. All the English language communication skills I ever learned was learned there. I did take a few college courses in English language and literature, but they really only repeated and reinforced my high school curriculum, which was sound.

My high school literature teacher was not a strong believer in adverbs. He considered them perhaps the most redundant of the eight parts of speech. And, though I like adverbs, my adult experience tends to vindicate that teacher of mine. In connection with my scientific writing I found that technical editors did not like adverbs: They thought adverbs ‘colored’ and skewed things and thus rendered scientific narratives somewhat less objective; and the general editors who have handled my non-scientific books do not like “qualifiers” in general (a category that includes adverbs) and always want to minimize the use of them.

Still, we know that adverbs serve a useful function: an adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. A good many adverbs (one might say the majority of them) are derived by affixing “ly” after an adjective (kindly from kind, etc.). Therefore, we tend to consider a word an adverb if it ends in “ly.” But one cannot rely on such inference because there are some words adjectives that end in “ly”. I used to think that likely, timely, leisurely, cowardly, (dis)orderly, etc. were always adjectives. So, while nearly all Americans say “It is likely true…” I used to say “It is probably true….” I now accept sentences like: “You will timely submit reports to us”; “Walk orderly behind the teacher”; “Walk leisurely to school” (with timely,” “orderly,” and “leisurely,” etc. used as adverbs. Thus I can now say “The cowardly lion spoke cowardly to the Wizard of Oz,” (using “cowardly as both adjective and adverb in the same sentence). I am learning, and I’m also beginning to see why the use of adverbs is waning.

Of course one mustn’t think that those stiff old rules were always obeyed rigidly by every writer. Some classic authors of past centuries sometimes ignored some of the straight-jacket rules of grammar and syntax: They had acquired enough authority to assert their independence of mind. What has changed in recent times is that the rules are now being disobeyed by many serious and knowledgeable writers, rather than by just a few masters.