ah, the comma

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No other punctuation mark causes as much writerly anxiety or editorial fierceness as this pesky little slip of ink.

You see, the comma tends to weave in and out of punctuation rules. “Do I really have to add that comma after the introductory phrase?” asks the novice writer. And the answer is…

ackMaybe.

If you feel like it. Sometimes absolutely. Does it sound right? Do you feel as if you need to pause there? What would your tenth-grade English teacher say?

As Bill the Cat on Bloom County used to say, “Ack!”

So which is correct–comma after an introductory phrase or not?

Today, I started a daily program of morning meditation.

Today I started a daily program of morning meditation.

Either sentence is correct. My comma-sense prefers the first.

And what about that contentious serial or Oxford comma, the one that goes before the final “and” or “or” in a series of items? “Last week, I wrote letters to old friends, my grandparents, and a former mentor.” “Last week, I wrote letters to old friends, my grandparents and a former mentor.”

If you’re in the Oxford-comma camp, you’ll joust to the death anyone who claims that second sentence is correct.

Here’s an example posted in “The Best Shots Fired in the Comma Wars” that defends the use of the serial comma:

“This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

I’ll stop here. For a rollicking read on this subject, check out Linda Holmes’ “Going, Going, And Gone?: No, The Oxford Comma Is Safe … For Now” at NPR.

vocabulary muscles

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filament

gustatory

rescind

No reason for those words. Well, yes, one moment. I just read “filament” in a reading about dandelions: “Yet is there anything more lovely than a sea of yellow dandelions by the side of the road in June? Or as remarkable in transformation as the filaments of the mature dandelion blowing on the wind?”

The word “filaments” in that last sentence gives me great pleasure because I see the wisp of translucent white float out into the air. One word–robust, full, evocative–the perfect word.

A robust vocabulary enlarges our world. We can reach farther and deeper when we pluck the words “nebula” or “sonar” from our vocabulary arsenal, our vocabulary toolbox, our vocabulary knapsack, our vocabulary sandbox. And you see what vocabulary accomplishes in that last sentence–do I view vocabulary as a weapon, a tool, a traveling companion, a plaything?

How do we develop a working robust vocabulary? By reading. A lot. Read what pleases you. Notice the words. Practice them. Make them yours.

But don’t fall prey to thesauritis. (This is not a real disease but a neologism I just created.) The thesaurus is a requisite item in a writer’s toolbox except when the writer hunts for and plucks a word without really getting to know that word. Here’s an example: “The hiker worried about the ominous and fuliginous sky.” (I take full responsibility for that sentence but have modeled it on an example in a published novel.) The word “fuliginous” means dark, dusky, obscure. But “fuliginous” is so far out of anyone’s ken that it sits in the sentence like a huge boulder. The word “ominous” already does the job, and it doesn’t bruise the reader’s eyes.

Go find your own vocabulary sandbox and enjoy those creative pings–those satisfied moments when you’ve discovered the perfect word.

dementia word soup

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I am now in almost daily face-to-face contact with my mom, who has Alzheimer’s, although she refuses to link the word “dementia” to her increasing problems. One indication of the disease has been the slipping away of nouns. As I listen to my mom string a sentence together, I imagine her in an intense linguistic workout, where 10 reps of word-searching yield a long phrase to replace the noun. A “remote” becomes a “blower that pushes buttons and opens things.” A “library” becomes a “place where they have things you can look at.”

These days, I ask my mom again and again what she means until I can decipher her word soup. Anyone caring for someone with dementia knows that a macabre sense of humor helps–any sense of humor helps. And so I wonder how I can recuperate what seems so sad–my mother loved to read and read fast, and she worked as an editor for academic publications. No longer.

So I’m moved towards poetry. Mom’s word soup can be poetry. She can be a demented poet. Poets give us images we might not otherwise see. So a star becomes a hole in the sky, perhaps. Maybe one way to get visionary is to let go of nouns and re-name things with a string of words. I promise here to view my mother as a language teacher–not as a former reader and writer to be pitied.

Update: 26 July and at lunch, Mom tried cheddar & sour cream potato chips. She wasn’t sure she liked them. She said they were hot and then followed up that observation with this: “They left a message on my tongue.”  If that’s not poetry, I don’t know what is.

language magic

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You’ll find two paragraphs below describing the same thing. Which appeals to you? Why? I doubt you’ll find two more disparate paragraphs in tone, style, rhythm, vocabulary, creative musculature. I love putting these two paragraphs side by side.

Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant in a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredrome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes in a gym bag. (Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain – first paragraph)

Today, when we look at the brain, we see an intricate network of billions of neurons in constant, crackling communication, a chemical labyrinth that senses the world outside and within, produces love and sorrow, keeps our hearts beating and lungs breathing, composes our thoughts, and constructs our consciousness. (Carl Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain–and How It Changed the World, 5)

10 worst Tweets ever

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I’m not sure if I created this prompt or not (“Create the 10 worst tweets ever”), but the following is what I wrote in my writing group when we used this prompt:

  1. Found half your beagle’s ear. Put in freezer. Isn’t his name Rexie?
  2. Rollo, Rollo, where are you, Rollo?  Rollo? Rollo? Where are you, Rollo?
  3. New toothpaste. Not the whitening one but the tartar prevention one. Not enough sparkles.
  4. What are the sparkles in toothpaste made up of? If I turn the night light out, will they glow green?
  5. PO Box 9617 Skokie IL. Don’t send me anything. Please. I beg you. Don’t.
  6. Tweetometer–new invention. Measures tweetability. This tweet measures -34.
  7. Forgot ear was in freezer. Power off. Smells really bad. Do you still want it?
  8. My cat played with her tail for 3 minutes. I changed diapers 8 times today.
  9. Corn is a fruit, isn’t it? No, that’s tomatoes. Corn is sister to soy, right?
  10. The answer is blowing in the wind. Quit staring. Go catch it. The answer. Or…

pet peeve #1

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You know we all have them–some of these peeves haunt us more egregiously than others. I’m not talking about a grammar-grinch attitude. I’m talking about those single linguistic moments that make our hearts burp and our eyeballs turn 20 degrees towards our brains.

Here’s an example: One of the members of my dissertation committee wrote one thing on the draft–a mark at every instance I wrote “quote” with the correction, “quotation,” in the margin. That’s it. OK, there were a few comments on translation issues, but no marginal comments on my ideas, organization, research. To this day, the skin under my right eye still twitches when I write “quote” instead of “quotation.” And the other thing? At the time I wrote my dissertation lo these many paleolithic years, “quote” was acceptable as “quotation.”

There. That was cathartic. So let me share my tic, and it is…the word “truly.”

If I could just wingardium leviosa that word into Pluto’s orbit, I’d be a happy camper.

Or, perhaps I’d be a truly happy camper. Really? Truly happy as opposed to what? A falsely happy camper? A half-happy camper?

“We truly hope you’ll enjoy our new product.” As opposed to not really hoping so much? Or maybe secretly hoping you’ll hate the new product, so the company will fold, and the CEO can go write poetry instead of selling dental orthotics in his family business, which seduced him into betraying his first love of the villanelle.

Most adverbs suck the life out of verbs. Don’t be a language wimp. Stand by your verbs.

vibrant verbs

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My K-12 English teacher friends use this term: vibrant verbs. I like the alliteration, the movement, the zing. Toni Morrison also said somewhere that the verb is the most important element of the sentence. Verbs venture valuable variety. Should I apologize for that painful alliteration? Maybe not today.

So get your verb diva on. Tussle with a sentence, harangue a paragraph, coax a revision. Then steal a well-deserved nap from your crowded linguistic schedule.

On the other hand… may the force be with self-editing!

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Self editing is the path to the dark side. Self editing leads to self delusion, self delusion leads to missed mistakes, missed mistakes lead to bad reviews. Bad reviews are the tools of the dark side.  – Eric T. Benoit

I don’t really believe that self-editing leads to the dark side, although it would behoove me to promote that belief (and I don’t even like the word “behoove”) because if everyone were an accomplished self-editor, there would be no market for editors. Self-editing can be thrilling… catching that pesky misplaced modifier you didn’t see on the first three reads, finally finding the shape of your conclusion after despairing of ever being able to end your piece. But once we’ve read our writing too many times, we go blind. Our writing mind skips over what it has seen too many times. That’s why we still need editors––even those of us who pride ourselves on magnificent self-editing skills.