Parenthetical commas are easy to get right . . .

7 Responses to Parenthetical commas are easy to get right . . .

1. do says:

   January 7, 2007 at 9:58 pm

   Examples?
2. minderbender says:

   January 26, 2007 at 1:43 pm

   Why won’t you answer Dice’s question?
3. Dave Gottlieb says:

   January 26, 2007 at 2:26 pm

   Maybe I should, but I haven’t made it a priority because no example will prove my point. I could pick out a few examples of parenthetical-comma fuck-ups, but that would be possible from any large body of writing. Actually showing that my observation about their frequency is right would require a ton of work.
4. minderbender says:

   January 26, 2007 at 3:09 pm

   Sorry, I just mean, what is a paranthetical comma, and how would a judge mess it up?
5. Dave Gottlieb says:

   January 26, 2007 at 3:41 pm

   Parenthetical commas are commas used to enclose parenthetical phrases, which basically means phrases you could put in parentheses. So the sentence

   Alan (the slave monkey) is actually the author of my entire life’s output

   could also be written as

   Alan, the slave monkey, is actually the author of my entire life’s output.

   A version with neither commas nor parentheses would also be acceptable. However, judges (and especially journal authors) love to fuck it up and write,

   Alan, the slave monkey is actually the author of my entire life’s output,

   which not only beggars belief but in this case totally changes the meaning of the sentence. Usually, though, they make subtler versions of that mistake, and the results are still comprehensible. So for example they might write, “and, especially journal authors,” when they mean, “and, especially, journal authors.”
6. minderbender says:

   January 26, 2007 at 6:57 pm

   Right, but you can often figure things out in context. So for instance, in this case we all know that Alan is the slave monkey.
7. do says:

   January 26, 2007 at 9:08 pm

   Haha. Thanks. I use them all the time; I didn’t know they were called that.