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Ralph's Guide to the Little Dots and Dashes
(PUNCTUATION )
Copyright, 2005, by Ralph. All rights reserved. Period.
The Period
Milke Tomahartman best describes this most terminal of
punctuation marks in her epic poem Ode to a Dot with her unforgettable stanza:
’Tis not the fact that nothing hereto will continue
That makes this mark so true,
More pressing is the sum
That nothing more thereto will come.
Though better known, and rightly so, for her grammar than
her prowess with words, the renowned poetess also penned a
twelve-thousand-six-hundred-page treatise entitled The Run-On Sentence. Surely
no truer supporter of the full stop has ever been known. (Surely no one
questioned her capitalization of the word on in the title, or anything in the book, for that matter.)
But back to the period. The period is used at the end of
a sentence, in numbered lists after the numbers, and in many abbreviations, and
some people find it a tasteful addition to a martini.
That's pretty much it. Period.
The Comma
The comma is a lot like the period, the major difference
being a little tail hanging down between what would be its legs if it had legs.
This is a good metaphor, since the difference between the comma and the period
is that the comma is a wimp, asking only a brief pause and not a full stop. It
is like a poodle in a world of Doberman pinschers and German shepherds.
What concerns editors most about the comma is not the
many nuances it can add to the language, or the many misreadings it can
prevent; what concerns editors is this: It looks foolish in many sans serif typefaces, especially
helvetica, with its tail attached to a tiny square box, giving it all the
artistic sophistication of The Powderpuff Girls.
Publisher: Helvetica looks modern.
Editor: Cavemen's drawings had more refinement!
Publisher: Don't we have to say caveperson? Anyway, this
typeface says "Today!" It says "Silicon Valley," it
says
"reality TV," it says . . .
Editor: It says boring!
Publisher: By the way, there is talk of more budget cuts
and there have been questions in the board room about the
need for copy
editors . . .
Editor: I kind of like helvetica, actually.
To fully understand the comma, see the section on the
History of the Comma, at the bottom of this page.
The Colon
The New York Colon Research Institute reports that people
have to be extremely careful in regards to the colon. Ralph's has declined to
attempt adding to this, knowing that we are unable to outdo an entire research
institute, especially if the institute is in New York (where they make great
pretzels). (Shucks, for an example of OUR idea of research, see the results of
two weeks of painstaking research by Ralph's entire editing team on the
subject of question marks—which results appear in the entry below on, yes,
question marks.)
The Semicolon
Once again, Ralph's does not wish to tred on ground
covered by great institutes, which are usually packed with people who have
letters like Ph. and D. after their names. However, we will venture to say that you
need be only partially careful with semicolons.
The Ampersand
This is not a punctuation mark; it is a word. Buy a
dictionary.
The Slash
This does well in late-night B movies.
Woman: It's dark and scary walking along this deserted
road
late at night.
Knife-Bearing Killer: Aaaahhhh! SLASH!
Woman: Ouch. Stop that.
The Question Mark
?
The Exclamation Point
!
The Greater-than Sign
The purpose of this punctuation mark is to perfect the
grace of typists, forcing them to fully lift their left pinkie off the shift
key before typing a period, when typing lettered lists.
A. The Democratic Party
B. Squash, an exciting vegetable
C. Oxen in heat
D> Damn!
Brackets
Brackets are things you put around your income so that
other people can talk about how high it is. This does not apply to copy
editors.
Parentheses
Anything that we could say about this mark would be
parenthetical, which is best handled by commas, as is evident in the previous
clause, and in what we have just said, and in the previous phrase, and in that
one, and in that one, and in that one . . . This could go on all night!
Parenthetically speaking.
The Em Dash
This—I have to tell you—is one wonderful—and useful—piece— of course, best stick to one em-dash insertion per sentence—lest your meaning be lost—
f punctuation.
In fact, skip learning all those other pesky punctuation
marks—this one suffices whenever you are in doubt— This entry has been
discontin—
Punctuated Equilibrium
This has to do with long periods (probably helvetica
black) and short periods (likely univers condensed) in evolution. It is
evolution punctuated with the period. Survival of the fullest stop.
Punctuator
This word is actually in the dictionary—apparently, "one
who punctuates." It even gets the distinguished -OR (governor, terminator [and,
of course, editor]) suffix as opposed to the pedestrian -ER (consumer, diner,
sister ["one who excels at being a sissy"]). And this word is much more
impressive than "editor"—"What do you do?" "I'm a
punctuator." "Ooh . . ."
Punctually Weak
OK, so punctually speaking, all of this is a little weak. But have a
look at the entry below, "The History of the Comma."
The History of the Comma
Legend has it that the comma (from the Sanskrit coma,
meaning "the partial cessation of operation of thought/the brain"), was, in
fact, invented, believe it or not, by ancient Greece’s greatest mathematician,
Hestrodostrophes, in the third century B.C., during the age that historians
call the Golden Age of Greek Mathematicians. It was invented, it so happens, as
a means of bringing about, as effectively as possible, the partial cessation of
operation of thought (he also experimented in the repetition of prepositions).
Hestrodostrophes had his own motive: This great theorizer of
numbers wanted desperately to silence the Greek philosophers (oxymoron: silence
a Greek philosopher), who had in recent centuries taken to hanging out in
marketplaces philosophizing loudly, in the process making it extremely
difficult to concentrate and get any math done—especially considering that
there were throngs of them, all disagreeing and none understanding a bit of
mathematics, meaning they did not stand a chance in Hades of arriving at any
sort of meaningful answer to any of their countless questions (Personally, my
goldfish disturbs me when I try to balance my checkbook.)
Philosophers: “We should not allow into our minds the
conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it.
Wanna buy some
cabbage?”
No wonder none of the Greeks ever discovered zero! (Of
course, they didn’t have my checkbook.) Who could concentrate with all that
noise going on?!
Philosophers: “ . . . much rather we should believe it is
we
who are not yet sound and that we must take courage
and be eager to attain
soundness. How about some
carrots with that?”
And so, to gain a little quiet, on Sunday afternoons, in
his little marketfront apartment, in downtown Athens, Hestrodostrophes invented
the comma. In it, you see, he, like, sought, you know, to make, and more than
succeeded, a device which would, under the guise of creating, say, comprehension,
in actuality completely obstruct, if you know what I mean, the flow of thought . . .
paralyzing the power of reason and in the process bringing about a sudden and dramatic
close to the Golden Age of Greek Philosophy.
You see, the comma worked like this: It allowed one, conveniently, where one found it necessary, to, where the grammar would permit,
and, occasionally, even where the grammar, would not, normally, permit, break
up thoughts, splitting ideas right down the in-, often blatantly so, finitive,
so that any series of thoughts and impressions, no matter how vague, no matter
how disjointed, and, of course, no matter how, shall we say, irrelevant, to be
expressed.
This new, exciting punctuation mark also, happily, if a
punctuation mark can be happy (beyond the people who spend too much of their
time sending e-mail and chatting on computer screens :) ) allowed for a
never-before-seen device: the parenthetical clause, which itself allows,
basically, writers to, haphazardly, throw in any, however small, little, tiny piece of
information, however minuscule, however trivial, without having to look at the
grammar of the sentence, and without having to, well, go to all the trouble of
breaking up what they were saying and begin a new sentence, which I do, as an
example, here, and, incidentally, did I tell you about my dog Pedro?
And most of ancient Greeks thought, and certainly all comprehension,
not to mention patience and attention span, ceased.
Unfortunately, Greek mathematicians also found immediate
uses for the comma—as a way to break up series of digits, for instance, or, if
carved out of marble, as bookends—and the Golden Age of Greek Mathematicians
ended along with the Golden Age of Greek Philosophers.
In fact, the comma pretty much put a lid on Greek thought
in general, and the ancient Hellenic civilization of Europe moved on to a new
stage, one powerful though less progressive, called the Golden Age of Leading
Large Greek Armies Around Conquering Foreign Lands, which required little
thinking and was best run by people who could not even read and were thus
immune to the effects of the mind-numbing punctuation mark.
Later, the Romans, who were never very big on thought to
begin with, were the inheritors of the comma. Since much of their knowledge and
technology, and even their religion, was, like the comma, a hand-me-down from
the Greeks, they were able to build a civilization despite the deadly partial
stop’s effect, though one which was limited to giving them a predilection for
spending much of the day in public baths (a little-known effect of the comma
that is still felt today by many who work with the mark, despite today's nonexistence
of public paths).
Unfortunately, a few centuries later, a Roman emperor
named Constantine found that he much preferred the baths in the ancient city of
Byzantium, partially because the water smelled nice and partially because the
bath girls were exceedingly pretty, and also partially because his wife, the
seven-foot empress Bertheus, took up nagging as a hobby. To
facilitate a more permanent settlement in Byzantium, one that Constantine solid reason to desert the towering and massive empress, Constantine under the guise of administrative
necessity divided the empire in half, east and west, and he did it, tragically
for civilization, with, yes, a comma:
THE EMPEROR HEREBYUM DECREUS THE EMPIRE TO
BE EASTIUM,
WESTIUS
The insertion of the comma spelled (and punctuated) the
end of Roman power. Had Constantine chosen a hyphen, the two halves would have
worked together to be even better than the original whole. Had he chosen a
slash, he would at least have confused his enemies and left himself a choice. Had he chosen an
exclamation point, he could have marketed the empire as a dot-com company. An
ampersand, an asterisk, a pound sign, a colon, UN peace-keeping troops,
anything would have been better, had he only made thr right choice of punctuation.
But he did not.
And so, the western Roman Empire fell, and a huge cloud
settled over Western Europe, bringing in nearly a millennium of despair known as
the Dark Ages (dark mainly from the dust). The empire's demise was due not to
the westward movement of the Hsiung-nu (Huns) and other barbarian peoples, not
to corruption, not to a bad poker hand, not to greed and vanity, not to
malaria, not to the insanity of the emperors fed out of lead-poisoned dishes—not from any of the excuses historians have raised—but rather to the comma.
(On a side note, the eastern Roman empire continued to
flourish for nearly a century, owing largely to its adoption of Greek as the
official language. You see, in post-Alexandrian Greece, the comma had taken on
a new meaning: not a partial stop but a footnote to the effect that great
meatballs and beer could be had at Hestrodostrophes’s beachfront café [the
family, having failed in mathematics, went into the restaurant business, with
its great ancestor’s invention given a new purpose—advertising]. And the effect
on writing and on thinking in general was so uplifting that the eastern half of
the empire quickly surpassed the original whole in brilliance and splendor, not
to mention gait, and went on to survive for a thousand years.)
The next folks to receive the comma as a hand-me-down
were the medieval clergy. These people were big into letters, epistles, writs,
and things like that. Writing played a huge part in their lives, as seen in the
following passage.
There is nothing to stop things being named by reference
to others, if the name is a relative term, as when things
are said to be
"in place" by reference to place, or
"measured" by
reference to measure. But concerning
non-relative terms opinions have differed.
. . .
—Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologiae
Clearly, the effects of the comma were severe. Some
historians have blamed the entire Dark Ages on it, but this is probably an
exaggeration; the semicolon may also have played a part.
Still, we can without too much doubt blame the following
on the comma: the Spanish Inquisition, the Black Death, the
Purple Death, the Great Schism, the Thirty Years War, high
rates of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder in seventeenth-century England, the Hundred Years War, Chaucer, the War of the Roses, the
Orange Death, the Death with the Cute Little Blue Sparkles, feudalism,
famine, oppression, persecution, France, the wars of religion, the Crusades, and, of course,
casseroles.
Finally, a group of Italian writers got together and
began composing in the vernacular, which is a really cool way of saying
"in their own language."
Which raises the question of why it was that they had been speaking and writing in Latin for so long; there hadn't been a good Latin-pop hit since "Feliz Navidad."
But since the words they spoke had never been put to pen,
the practice of the comma, along with most other punctuation marks, was for a
time forgotten, and real literature began to spring up nd flourish, as did ineloquent but
easy-to-use phrasal verbs like spring up.
The great Age-of-Reasonist Rene Descartes
locked himself in a room and doubted away everything in existence, right down
to the chair he was sitting in. When he got back up off his butt , he began to come up with excuses for things, beginning with
his famous adage:
I think, hence I am.
(Actually, his first premise proving the existence of eistence was "My butt hurts, hence there is existence, namely the hard ground." However, subsequent philosophers have hesitated to base their life work on the statement. So we know instead)
I think, hence I am.
It is not commonly reported in the philosophy books, but
Descartes then went on for fifty pages worth of text to experiment with and expound
upon different placement of the comma:
I think hence, I am.
I, think hence, I am.
And he quickly saw that wherever he placed the comma, the statement still pretty much represented the way he felt.
I think, hence, I am.
I, think hence I, am.
And he went on for another fifty pages arguing the worthlessness of this piece of punctuation and warning of its dangers.
And so what led to the Age of Reason was not really the
placement of ration as a basis of understanding the world, but rather Rene
Descarte's little known work "101 Discourses on the Placement of Commas."
Copyright, 2005, by Ralph.
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