Posts Tagged Writing
Comma-tary Vol. 1: The Oxford Comma
Confession: I came into this world burdened with an abiding concern for the comma.
In 7th grade, I paid close attention when we learned punctuation rules, because those with highest scores on a test could sit at the back of the class for the next unit.
Our English teacher was kind and precise, with a faultless pageboy and sensible pumps. Each year she had pit-crew passes to the Indy 500 from friend Bobby Unser (Andretti?), and we failed to picture her in the grease and noise, her lacquered blonde hair blown wild in the acrid smoke of burnt tires. Strangely, this detail of her personal life leant credibility to what she taught. We had assumed she spent her free time alphabetizing the canned goods in her pantry.
Punctuation functioned like traffic signs, she said, telling readers when to pause, yield, stop. To me, semi-colons and commas seemed more like galvanized rivets that bolted together the scaffolding of sentences. Missing rivets meant the framework sagged or tipped; solid rules meant the structure would hold.
It was a tedious topic, until we came to the serial comma. In an architecture of rigid rules, the serial comma presented a stylistic choice. The window sash opened, just a bit, for interpretation.
The teacher preferred strict usage and graded accordingly: This, that, and the other. Yet the final comma in the series was optional, and omission of the said comma might be successfully argued if meaning remained clear without it.
A legal loophole. The imp of artist’s anarchy appeared on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. You can be wrong, and still be right. You can break the rules, get an A, and keep your seat at the back of the class.
Debate over usage of the serial comma, also called the Oxford comma, continues to rage. The serial comma has a page on Wikipedia. The Oxford comma has fans on Facebook. September 24 is National Punctuation Day. Wars have started, duels fought, inky blood shed, over the usage of the serial comma.
John McIntyre quells the riots, instructing folks to sheath their steel. The former president of the American Copy Editors Society says:
The old principle of cuius regno, ejus religio — “whose region, his religion,” or follow your prince’s practice — can be applied here. Follow whichever style your employer dictates, and indulge your own taste in private.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell said, “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom, as long as you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”
Full Comma-tary Series:
Add comment March 1, 2009
Be creative!
After discussing creativity and writing, the Amazing Third Graders supplied awesome words for our Wordle. Merci, les étudiants!
For a larger view, just click on each box.
Add comment February 18, 2009
Trust in Cod
A member of the pastoral counseling staff was misquoted in our church newsletter: “Over the years, I’ve just learned to trust in Cod.”
I would think of this while taking the kids to preschool. The newsletter used 12-point Times Roman font, making a C and G hard to distinguish. Spell-check wouldn’t catch it.
In the church parking lot, we’d pass the car belonging of the director of Welcoming Ministries. Her license plate read: 367-COD. Cod was made manifest and walked among us.
I’d nose our van into a parking space among the battalion of minivans and SUVs that swarmed with hopping children, and mothers carrying toddlers and diaper bags. I’d haul open the sliding door for our 3-year-old, check for backpack and jacket (shoes, hat, countenance), take him by the hand, and then walk to the other side of the van and unlatch the heavy carseat for the baby, who was finally asleep. Hoisting the baby seat in front of me like a lantern, I tugged my preschooler behind me, as we threaded a long path through narrow rows of cars.
I’d drive home, thinking of my license plate: 246-COW. It wasn’t a vanity plate; I’d have chosen something with gazelle.
I could remember a time when I’d debated the use of the Oxford comma, or the virtues of Words Into Type. I’d once bought the Chicago Manual of Style for a job interview. I’d written a thank-you note to a publishing house editor, who hired me for a freelance position. She’d pointed out that “accommodation” had more than one m, and sent me my first assignment.
I pulled the bovine van into the garage, and brought the baby inside. I had an idea for an article, if the baby slept before it was time to pick up his brother.
When the sun came up, Jesus was standing on the beach, but they didn’t recognize him. Jesus spoke to them: “Good morning! Did you catch anything for breakfast?” They answered, “No.”
He said, “Throw the net off the right side of the boat and see what happens.” They did what he said. All of a sudden there were so many fish in it, they weren’t strong enough to pull it in.”
–The Message: The Bible in contemporary language, John 21:4-6
3 comments February 6, 2009
Resolutions
2009 Fortunes
New Year’s Resolutions:
#1 Stop researching and start writing.
#2 No more fortune cookies.
4 comments January 7, 2009
The air should suffice
Palais des Congres, Montreal, by Doug Bull
“Emerson said: ‘The poet’s habit of living should be set on a key so low and plain that the common influences should delight him. His cheerfulness should be the gift of sunlight; the air should suffice for his inspiration and he should be tipsy with water.’
“Have we packed our lives with such a frantic pace in search of elusive happiness that God cannot get a word in edgewise?”
–Gertrud Mueller Nelson, To Dance with God
Add comment January 3, 2009
Plant a tree, write a book
” At the end of the day, what will people say about you? 
If folks were totally candid, totally honest, how would your epitaph read? In the Talmud it is suggested that to be successful in this life you should plant a tree, have a child, or write a book. This means you should be sure that you have exerted an influence for good in this life that lives on after your days are on earth are done.”
– At the End of the Day, James W. Moore
Tree of Life, David Friedman
5 comments April 12, 2008
Experience & Artifact
“There’s experience and artifact.” Participants in the manuscript workshop scramble quietly to jot these opening words from Dinty W. Moore. We’re sitting in a spare, tall-ceilinged conference room in the new Journalism building at the University of Mississippi. Some of us live within a few hours’ drive of Ole Miss, others have traveled much further to attend pre-conference writing workshops at the Mid-South Conference for creative nonfiction.
Ah, I think, I have lots of artifacts to write about. Sea glass from a Maui beach, photos from last summer’s camping trips in the mountains, my kids’ artwork, Roman-era tiles from Caesarea in Israel, the old pewter teapot from Ireland.
But this is not what Dinty means. Artifact is not stuff. It’s the so-what. In writing essay or memoir, it’s not enough to describe personal experience with craft and wit. Artifact is what is made from that experience, the switch to writing experience in a way that will benefit the reader. If experience prods the initial impulse for writing, artifact asks, Who cares?
Dinty says he’s a “bear” about revision. By draft #28 or #30 or so, he says he should be able to articulate what question he’s answering. My short pieces are critiqued at the end of the day, and by then, I’m concerned I haven’t done near enough work with the so-what. In the workshop we’ve been awash in experience, most of it beautifully written, and for me the better work that emerges from the group stands out from the others because of well-considered insight we can take with us.
For the rest of the conference, I will hear a little voice in my ear asking, What’s at stake? Who cares?, like a dogged tune, what my aunt calls an earworm. Despite the parroting repetition, this is one refrain I don’t want to chase away.
2 comments March 29, 2008
