Interlude: For the Love of Punctuation

On Thursday I rose early for a 7 AM conference call, dialing sleepily as I sat on the back porch and watched the animals roam the back yard in search of the best blades to nibble. After about ten minutes of listening to the world's most excellent hold music, I concluded that no one else was joining the call and sent out a "What's up?" e-mail. Someone kindly replied with the news that it was actually Wednesday.

Ahhh, summer.

My other favorite thing about the summer, besides the ability to forget what day it is with relatively few consequences is that I can read without guilt. I took advantage of an unbelievable deal ($5 for 3 months of the New York Times on all our Apple devices) and have enjoyed a number of articles over the last few weeks, articles I haven't been able to share with you because of this pesky resolution to write about France.

So I'm going to take a weeklong break before returning to the second half of my Top Ten Paris list. First up is a fun piece about punctuation from a writer who learned, over time, to disregard the mighty Kurt Vonnegut's advice:

Vonnegut’s dismissal of semicolons therefore struck me as more than a mere matter of style. This was, like his refusal to describe his war experience in heroic terms, a demonstration of virtue. To abjure semicolons was to declare oneself pure of heart, steely-eyed, sadly disillusioned. I pictured Vonnegut and Hemingway sitting together on a porch, squinting grimly out at the road, shaking their heads at what the literary world had come to. I wanted nothing more in life than to climb onto one of the empty rockers beside them.

Maybe this is only funny if you've seen Midnight in Paris (and if you haven't, what are you waiting for?!) But then he goes on to strike at the heart of what I love and hate about the Internet and modern life, and wraps it all up in a beautifully articulated lesson about syntax:

Many times a week I’d been experiencing a mental event like this: I’d be reading an article about a flood in Mexico, which would lead me to thinking about a wedding I once went to in Cancún, which would lead me to thinking about marriage, which would lead to gay marriage, which would lead to the presidential election, which would lead to swing states, which would lead to a fascinatingly terrible country song called “Swing” — and I’d be three songs into a Trace Adkins YouTube marathon before I’d glance back down at the newspaper on the table.

It’s in honoring this movement of mind, this tendency of thoughts to proliferate like yeast, that I find semicolons so useful. Their textbook function — to separate parts of a sentence “that need a more distinct break than a comma can signal, but that are too closely connected to be made into separate sentences” — has come to seem like a dryly beautiful little piece of psychological insight. No other piece of punctuation so compactly captures the way in which our thoughts are both liquid and solid, wave and particle.

Go read the rest and have a good laugh at yourself, and at writers in general.  It's good for all of us.

​

Grammarians Unite!

This guy is on a mission from God:

Mr. Vincent felt a burst of relief that soon gave way to trepidation after he caught sight of a sign. “No standing,” it read, “April to October.”

Mr. Vincent wondered what exactly that “to” meant, dithered for a bit, and then decided that it meant no parking until October began, which meant that that day, Oct. 2, was fair game. 

Of course he got a ticket anyway.  (Ask me sometime about the time a police office misinterpreted a sign when my Mom was trying to park in Wall Street.)  But he has appealed it twice and is looking to go on to the State Supreme Court:

“Every accepted printed dictionary supports my grammatical interpretation of the parking sign,” he wrote. “To: Up to but not including. Through: To and including.”

And, in a further display of logic-defying brazenness, the city has effectively proved him correct:

In the meantime, a new sign has appeared in the old one’s stead. “No Standing,” it reads, “April 1-Sept. 30.”

What a world we live in.  Mr. Vincent, I’m behind you all the way.

Public Speaking 101

Thanks to our fearless governor for providing the following stellar examples of what NOT to say at a press conference:

Repeat Yourself

“It is the height of stupidity and the height of selfishness for any citizen to stay in Ocean City and put a burden on and risk the lives of first responders by being foolish, being stupid, or being selfish,” O’Malley said.

Run On … and On

“This is a mandatory evacuation order. It is not something that the mayor of Ocean City or I have ordered lightly. It has not been done in modern times and people need to get off the island of Ocean City and not be a burden to their fellow citizens or to first responders who are going to have plenty of other important work to do.” 

Meanwhile, my wise and selfless in-laws are safely inland, dreading their next trip to the beach.  In Baltimore, we’re preparing for several days of rain, some heavy winds and possible loss of power — nothing like what the coastal population will face.  Our thoughts and prayers are with them.

A Dose of Reality

So I'm sloooowly working my way through twenty-five ten-page research papers, alternately commenting, disagreeing, cheering and shaking my head.  The proliferation of misplaced commas and plagiarized passages is depressing.  The occasional smooth transition or original idea is encouraging.  Mostly, I'm just hoping I'll finish soon.

This article*, then, helped remind me of how lucky I am to be teaching these students, and how lucky we all are to have such a stable existence:
Twenty percent of Fern Creek’s students are homeless, and school is the best part of the day for many of them. All eight members of the Collins family — Brianna is the oldest of six children, including three who are too young for school — live in a 13-foot-by-15-foot windowless room and share three bunk beds. It is a great relief getting out in the morning and off to school.

“They love Fern Creek,” said their father, who lost his job hanging drywall after the economy collapsed. “I can’t say nothing bad about Fern Creek.”

The children’s mother, Felica Blue, who lost her job working the 11 p.m.-to-4 a.m. shift cleaning the arena after the Orlando Magic’s basketball games, said: “They love Fern Creek. Brianna’s always talking about kids from her class.”

Ms. Schreffler is struck by how happy Sydney is despite her circumstances. “She’s so grateful. It seems like everything is, ‘Thank you, Ms. Schreffler,’ ” she said.

So sad.  So inspiring.  And now, back to work.

*By the way, I've finally found a use for Twitter: a loophole toward unlimited access to the New York Times! Just search for what you want (I tried "NYT education") and read away.  My theoretical support for their new capitalist venture does not translate into financial support -- remember, I'm Armenian -- so I was glad to find a free source with which to indulge my news habit.

The Race that Knows Joseph

I knew from the first I ever read of Dr. Popham that I liked his innovative, no-nonsense thinking.  I wasn't sure why until now:
I love hyphens. Always have. Always will. If used properly, hyphens make things easier to read. This is because hyphenated words let readers know there’s something still coming in a phrase that’s being read, so the reader should hold off a bit before deciding on the meaning of what’s being read at that instant.

He goes on to discuss the difference between formative assessment (read: test) and formative-assessment (the continual process of updating and improving instruction so it's as effective as possible) with the same intellectual aplomb visible in the first interview I read; yet I think that ultimately, I like him because he's a fellow grammar geek.

It's so easy to knock grammar -- and I'll admit that our language is more confusing and self-contradictory than any of the few others I've encountered.  But how lovely, how elegant and incisive it is to be able to express oneself with wit and specificity!  A typo-riddled e-mail may not render you a termagant, as it does me, but how many times have you become frustrated by another's inability to understand you?  It's not merely convention; it allows for a more precise and direct expression of your thoughts.

Mr. Safire is the demigod of this personal religion; I am merely a lowly disciple on her circuitous way to enlightenment . . .

Emma Speaks

She's one of my favorite actresses of all time: so superbly classy that she shines through even an article as poorly written as this one.  She's speaking about speaking, and more specifically about the lack of education displayed in the limited vocabularies of today's youth:


We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power. (. . .) There is the necessity to have two languages - one you use with your mates and the other that you need in an official capacity. Or you're going to sound like a nob.



Ah, the British.  Telling it like it is since the Iron Age.


She's right, of course; I notice subtle changes in my own vocabulary when I speak to certain friends (who might make fun of me for sounding too educated) or certain age groups (who wouldn't understand me if I sounded too educated.)  I try to explain this to my students, who want to use "being that" and "ppl" in their formal papers: it's all about sensitivity to your audience.  I'm not above writing "lol" on a student's journal entry if it really did make me laugh, but I wouldn't do it on a memo from my supervisor.


Thanks to Laura for sending the article along!