Merrily goes the donkey...
Jan. 14th, 2004 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaA round up of minor arcanities:
Today's word from the calendar is assishness. So far the calendar has produced around half-and-half words which could feasibly be slotted into conversations - this is one such, meaning (unsurprisingly) "asinine quality, stupidity". So off you go: use it today three times in conversation, and once in your LJ.
Having now finished reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I can report that I am a fan of the Oxford comma. Which is apparently the correct name for the controversial comma inserted after the penultimate item in a list. So: our main weapons are surprise, our nice red uniforms, and a fanatical dedication to the Pope. See the comma after uniforms ? That's an Oxford comma, that is. I've got no idea why it's so named. And while I don't always put it in lists, sometimes it's very handy. Everyone with an interest in writing should read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by the way. It manages to steer a pleasingly sane course between the extremes of "punctuation is set in stone" and "punctuation doesn't matter at all".
And, looking for something else, I found this website. Which contains all sorts of odd facts about how to splice tape and create different effects thereby. I don't believe I'm likely to do this, but it interested me none-the-less. Reminded me of the day a schoolfriend and I discovered that you could turn tape inside out to play songs backwards, and spent an educational afternoon looking for hidden messages in songs. We didn't find any.
Today's word from the calendar is assishness. So far the calendar has produced around half-and-half words which could feasibly be slotted into conversations - this is one such, meaning (unsurprisingly) "asinine quality, stupidity". So off you go: use it today three times in conversation, and once in your LJ.
Having now finished reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I can report that I am a fan of the Oxford comma. Which is apparently the correct name for the controversial comma inserted after the penultimate item in a list. So: our main weapons are surprise, our nice red uniforms, and a fanatical dedication to the Pope. See the comma after uniforms ? That's an Oxford comma, that is. I've got no idea why it's so named. And while I don't always put it in lists, sometimes it's very handy. Everyone with an interest in writing should read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by the way. It manages to steer a pleasingly sane course between the extremes of "punctuation is set in stone" and "punctuation doesn't matter at all".
And, looking for something else, I found this website. Which contains all sorts of odd facts about how to splice tape and create different effects thereby. I don't believe I'm likely to do this, but it interested me none-the-less. Reminded me of the day a schoolfriend and I discovered that you could turn tape inside out to play songs backwards, and spent an educational afternoon looking for hidden messages in songs. We didn't find any.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 05:58 am (UTC)I'm fairly inconsistent wrt the Oxford comma, but on the whole I tend to be in favour. It puts a slight break where one would put a slight break in speech, and I tend to like that kind of usage.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 05:59 am (UTC)And, not as advertised, I am now not reading Foucault's Pendulum. Sorry,
This is because the book I borrowed from
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:38 am (UTC)The reason I'm not a fan of of this is that, although it clears up:
I went shopping at Tesco's, Boots', and Marks and Spencers', it doesn't help if there are three things listed in the compound term, such as groups of lawyers:
I'm dithering between Smith, Jones, and Davies, Loeck, Stuch, and Barl, or This, That, and the Other.
I *believe* it's the Oxford Comma because OUP, or at least the OED, insist on its use. But there are no references to this in the text I've got to hand.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:55 am (UTC)[example snipped]
Er... so you don't like it because it only does one job, not two ? Do you have a better solution ?
I like what it does, when it does it. I didn't say it was infallible :)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 08:08 am (UTC)Actually, this is partially a reaction to the pedantry of OED lexicographers, who will completely ignore the meaning of an email, whilst (or while ;) still complaining about the missing comma.
Of course, the OED is a bit of a special case, since it does consist mainly of lists, and quite frequently lists of lists. In normal writing, you rarely get such constructs, and the Oxford Comma works quite adequately: I've re-started using it myself!
Oxford comma
Date: 2004-01-14 07:09 am (UTC)Good to see a sentence beginning with but there.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:10 am (UTC)Shame it would be rather tricky to get it into scrabble really.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 08:26 am (UTC)Been in print for almost 100 years now though so it's bound to have made it to official word-dom ;-)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:20 am (UTC)Did you get that for christmas also? I wonder how much our christmas lists overlapped!
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:53 am (UTC)Did you get a can of WD40, a set of African Witch-Doctor's Bones[*], and a Thermarest (http://www.cascadedesigns.com/thermarest/) as well ?
[*] I mean, of course, the kind of bones you cast. Not the poor Witch-Doctor's own bones. That'd be far too risky.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 07:05 am (UTC)After that, my christmas list included a gift set containing deoderant and a radio (who thinks of these things!), the (auto)biography of the Pythons (as in the Monte variety), a Go board, and loads of clothes.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:24 am (UTC)I didn't get any, but I did buy a few copies for people.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 06:35 am (UTC)I do have a copy of eats, shoots and leaves it's for my brother the grammer pedant.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 11:44 am (UTC)Surely, as an item in a list preceding the penultimate which, I agree, needs an Oxford comma, there should be a semi-colon after surprise.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 12:01 pm (UTC)*double takes*
Ooh! There goes another one!
(Got the book for Xmas too, though I know a *far* ruder version of the cover title joke....)
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 03:51 am (UTC)I think this Oxford comma is fine in cases like the above, where you're switching from single word list items to phrases, so you want a break between the two parts of the list.
In cases like the putative "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" I think it's superfluous. It's not a break, it's purely a list separator. But "and" is already doing the job being a list separator. The comma therefore doesn't mean anything, so it shouldn't be there.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-15 05:49 am (UTC)I don't think I'd go so far as to call your example above wrong, but I wouldn't write it. (Well, not on purpose, anyway.)