Like a Cretan
Commageddon
March 15, 2010 10 comments
Newspaper subeditors generally have a better command of grammar and punctuation than the writers whose copy they render printworthy, but they are not immune to human error. For example, they will sometimes insert a comma where it is not needed, as well as remove a comma where it is needed. I fear something of the former ilk may have befallen Catherine Bennett in the Observer, under whose byline appears the following sentence:
But like a Cretan, who thinks it worth adding, “just ask my wife” to the line “all Cretans are liars”, Brown accepts that the public might, occasionally, feel the need for corroboration.
Unfortunately, the rogue comma after the first “Cretan” has here changed the sense. Bennett is made to be saying that all Cretans will add “just ask my wife” to the declaration “all Cretans are liars”, when she clearly intended to indicate only a peculiar subset of Cretans with the noun phrase a Cretan who thinks it worth…. “Like a Cretan, who…” (as printed) introduces further description of the generic Cretan, whereas “Like a Cretan who…” (as intended) modifies the kind of Cretan we are talking about. ((One may imagine the violence that would be done to an analogous sentence, say: “Like a sheep whose coat is drenched, Maximilian was shivering”. To insert a comma after sheep here would be to risk implying that all sheep at all times have drenched coats and shiver.))
Meanwhile, the second comma of the sentence (after adding) is also rogue — at a pinch, you could balance it with another comma after “wife”; but it is plainly unnecessary. This case does not change the sense: it just looks clumsy. Still, two defective commas in one sentence is particularly annoying.
Do you feel an urge to insert supererogatory commas into other people’s writing, readers?
The comma after the word “adding” shouldn’t be there at all. “Just ask my wife” is a group of words that are the object of “adding” so they shouldn’t be separated by a comma.
I must admit that I do often feel the urge to change the punctuation in other people’s sentences. It’s part of what I get paid to do, and the habit continues in my free time. I even got as bit twitchy looking at your sentence starting “Meanwhile, the second comma …..”: two commas, a semi-colon and a dash all in one sentence!
Go easy on the pedantry, Steven. Next thing you know you’ll be denouncing dead leftists and obsessing over Chomsky…
I agree with Guano. We use a lot of needless commas.
But the risk would seem small – probably smaller than that of implying an instruction to feel affection for a sheep. (Like a sheep, but in a non-sexual way).
I often feel the need to add useless, and sometimes misleading, commas, to my own writing.
However my editors are doing a relatively good job of training it out of me.
Please do apostrophe’s!
Usually I suck it up and think “not everyone these days has had the advantage of the education I suffered through. Many people nowadays have English as their second, or even third, language. Be kind.”
But I nearly choked when I saw a half-page broadsheet ad that said something like:
“Buy this new product and the Jones’ will have to keep up with you!”
How many hands and minds did that have to pass through unscathed? How many mistakes are there in that single Jones’ ? It’s not really ignorance. The writer has clearly thought, “there’s something about names that end in “S” and it’s got to do with apostrophes so bugger it, I’ll plonk one in somewhere and everyone will think I’m a grammar whiz.”
Aaaaarghh!
if a word nding in’s’ needs a possessive, just use the apostrophe with no pendant ‘s’. That is how I was taught 40 years ago, so no doubt others had it the same.
There is a difference between a preference, no matter how vehement and a rule you know.
I believe I may be misunderstood. In this example “Jones” is not used in the possessive sense. It is intended as a plural and therefore takes no apostrophe in any case. The saying is “Keeping up with the Joneses“. If the James family lives next door one says either “The James family has invited us to dinner”, or “The Jameses have invited us to dinner”. Both “Jesus’s cat just shat on the James’ lawn”, and “Jesus’ cat shat on the Jameses’ mat” are correct. I am not expressing a preference at all, vehement or otherwise. It is a rule which helps make clearer the meaning of what we say and write. The only preference is whether you say the Jameses’ cat or the James’ cat. I think.
Is this the sentence from which the two errant commas in Bennett’s piece were extracted?
#9 wins.