Tuesday, September 26, 2006
dear blogger
As I waited for my blog to be published, I had a realization that I feel the world needs to know. Do you know that this sentence, "This may take a few minutes, if you have a large blog" is incorrect? Let's look at it carefully. This sentence is what we call a complex sentence--meaning that it contains an independent and a dependent clause. The independent clause: This may take a few minutes. The dependent clause: if you have a large blog. Now when we have a complex sentence with the independent clause coming first, WE DO NOT NEED A COMMA!!!!!! Thus the sentence should read, "This may take a few minutes if you have a large blog." If we put the dependent clause first, then we would need a comma--making the sentence read, "If you have a large blog, this may take a few minutes." Our world is suffering from commitis, or the annoying habit of adding commas here and there and wherever we think we need them. The truth is that you need far fewer (thank you, Sara V) commas than you think you do. There you go. A speech I deliver almost every day.
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9 comments:
Well, friend, if we're going to get into grammar and editing, I should remind you that we need far "fewer" commas than we think we do. :)
good one, sara. that's my pet peeve--in the grocery store express lane it always says, "10 items or LESS."
anyway, margaret, i can't believe i checked your blog and read this speech. this is EXACTLY what i talked about in class today--complex sentences and when you do/don't need commas. you're teaching high school and i'm teaching college, but we're teaching the same thing.... is there something wrong with this picture???
sigh.
Sarah, I think that these are things that have to be repeated numerous times in order for them to stick. My pet peeve with my grade nines is that they want to put commas "where they pause." Or "to break up the sentence." You can read a sentence and pause wherever you want, but that doesn't mean that there should be a comma there.
Ah yes, fewer and less is one that I get mixed up on regularly. Thanks, Sara. :)
i don't know what to say. how to you respond to this kind of blog?
You're such a teacher.
I think, I might suffer, from a small case of commitis.
It is, a bad habit.
I, love, you, Margaret.
BOOOOORRRRRRIIIIINNNNNNGGGG!!!!!!
Commmas, however, can at times, and in certain situations, be used, although not always, to refer to, what I believe at least, is verbal pauses which when put in a sentence, in which the author wishes there to be pauses, makes the reader pause, and then continue with the sentence.
Or am I wrong!
Yes, I still am an ass!
Dane you make me want to shoot myself in the foot so that I don't have to go to school for a while. This is anything BUT boring! The fate of the world could hang on the proper placement of a comma. Or not.
Don't give me any of your choppy, I-think-you-should-pause-here sentences.
dane, that was so pitifully pretentious.
pitiful.
i still love you, but seriously.
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