Comments on: Put on your Oxfords and dance

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:28:56 +0000

Well, actually – the passive construction is a voice, not a tense. And yes, scientists tend to abuse it mercilessly.

This unsolicited pedantic quibble brought to you by the letters P and Q, and the number 4.

By: Mark Alger

Mark Alger — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:37:31 +0000

Just tell the scientists and engineers it’s a delimiter. They’ll get the concept then.

By: McGehee

McGehee — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:20:05 +0000

I have no idea where I picked up the habit of using that serial comma the way Jacqueline demands but I do remember quite distinctly being told to omit it, much later in my learning life.

I probably leave it out by habit these days but I think I’ll make a point of including it from now on — especially since I have been known to insert commas where they may not necessarily be needed but help to set off different clauses in some of the convoluted compound sentences I sometimes write. Such as in the one instance in this entire comment where I do actually use a comma.

Left to my own devices I could easily become a commaholic.

By: Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Musings from Brian J. Noggle — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:17:26 +0000

Sharing A Ministry…

I beat that into enough designers that they do it correctly, years later and in different positions. And if only one of them passes the lesson on, I’m totally reaping the Amway benefits of knowledge-spreading….

By: Jacqueline

Jacqueline — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:13:38 +0000

“Do you think we could get Jacqueline to take on the tax code next?”

I am actually in grad school studying to become a tax accountant. But I plan to work against the IRS, not for them, so I don’t know how much influence I’ll have over the code. :)

By: sya

sya — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:23:28 +0000

I am currently reading a writing how-to book where the author advocates using opaque-sounding jargon if your audience is expecting opaque-sounding jargon. It made me want to throw the book down and run over it with a tractor, but I’m sure the library wouldn’t appreciate me doing that.

I’d like to think I’m more on the side of clarity rather than grammatical and stylistic snobbishness, but I’ll have to say that the serial comma is one of those things for which I do not compromise.

By: Violins and Starships

Violins and Starships — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:48:31 +0000

The Final Comma…

Okay, I’m convinced. I vaguely remember learning in school that you do not need to put a comma before “and” in a sentence like, “My favorite composers are Mozart, Bach, Dvorak and Beethoven.” In that sentence you could do it either way and there w…

By: CGHill

CGHill — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:20:10 +0000

Well, you know what they say about generalizations. I would certainly never believe that Sya, who frequents this corner, writes bad scientific papers; I’ve seen her NaNoWriMo stuff, and it’s always well-crafted.

Given Jacqueline’s political bent, I’d expect that she’d prefer to burn the entire structure to the ground and start over.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:13:37 +0000

Except now some of the mavens are telling us we are supposed to omit that last comma. Which irks me, as I was taught the other way and also because I can see cases where omitting that last comma in the series could possibly lead to misunderstanding.

Not all scientists are bad writers, but I will say I’ve learned not to say “Wow, I must really be tired/having a low-brain day” when I can’t understand an article: in a lot of cases, it’s the writer and not me.

Do you think we could get Jacqueline to take on the tax code next? Because if she thinks scientific writing is bad and opaque…