Mahakumbh- Will it be rinse-and-repeat?

The Comma Sense

Practise safe text, use commas

An acquaintance pointed out that last week’s post was too long. “How can you expect me to read more than 2000 words when I now-a-days have the attention span of few-seconds-long Tik-Tok videos?” he asked with irritation, “and only a long list of jobs involving unpacking at that, which would only invoke a series of sore memories?”

I stayed quiet, something very difficult for me, chewing on my reply which incidentally deviated my attention to my aching tooth. But I know that the people who take out time to read my blog also read books, articles, essays and newspapers, don’t they?

Yet, to humour readers like him, I shall punctuate my ruminations, actually quite literally, and keep it short and sweet today.

When we speak, the pauses in our speech and the inflections in the tone make the purpose and meaning very clear. But for the written word, punctuation is the only aid for putting clarity in it.I am not a grammarian and it would be presumptuous on my part to try teaching what punctuation is and its importance in written language. Yet honestly, who doesn’t love the bloopers? So, let us just have a few moments of fun, and only with the wrong usage of the simple, innocuous-looking comma. 

I am choosing not to mention at present, the Oxford comma, also called serial or Harvard comma. This is the comma we put before and as is clear from the example below.

Mary Price, the author of Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

writes in The New Yorker:

… the comma's unique, multi-faceted power: It can highlight, it can clarify, it can create a rhythm. Most importantly: It can force us to pause.The comma as we know it was invented by Aldo Manuzio, a printer working in Venice, circa 1500. It was intended to prevent confusion by separating things. In Greek, komma means “something cut off,” a segment. (Aldo was printing Greek classics during the High Renaissance . The comma was a Renaissance invention.) As the comma proliferated, it started generating confusion. Basically, there are two schools of thought: One plays by ear, using the comma to mark a pause, like dynamics in music; if you were reading aloud, the comma would suggest when to take a breath. The other uses punctuation to clarify the meaning of a sentence by illuminating its underlying structure. Each school believes that the other gets carried away. It can be tense and kind of silly, like the argument among theologians about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. 

Aren’t we all familiar with the following examples where the importance of commas at the right place is important ?

Time to eat children. That is only possible if you are a cannibal. So let us keep it right with the invitation/suggestion:Time to eat, children.

Have you eaten my child? Sounds like a question from a horror movie while you were concerned if the child was hungry.Have you eaten, my child?

Or another example:We are going to learn to cut and paste kids. No, he/she obviously meant to : We’re going to learn to cut and paste, kids.

A comma accords more clarity to a sentence.

Go, slow men at work. That would mean go ahead, the men are too slow to disturb your pace. Yet, Go slow, men at work is the exact opposite. It is a warning that you might endanger the life of either yourself or the men at work if you are not careful about your speed.

According to Wikipedia:

The United States Postal Service (Preparing shipments: The United States Postal Service) and the Royal Mail are among the few ones which recommend  leaving out punctuation when writing addresses on actual letters and packages as the marks hinder optical character recognition. (How to address your mail: Royal Mail (UK).

I found dozens of examples of comma abuse but was advised against using them here by some well-wishers who opined that they may hurt the delicate sense of propriety of some of the readers. So I have some harmless ones like the following to offer.

Isn't  this downright offensive without the comma?

The error on the cover of a magazine! For a second you’d be zapped. How often does she cook her family and her dogs too?

A simple comma after ‘eat’ would have prevented the reader from feeling like throwing up  after reading the symptom.

Really? Why this bias against dogs while all other balls are allowed inside the park? Anyway, how do dogs leave them at home and come to the park?   

This reads like a quick, convenient way to get rid of the poor woman with no harm done to the husband’s pocket.

I do not know who thought up of comparing  a cat with a comma, but this one did catch my attention.

And the legend goes how the absence of a comma after sorry spelt the end of what could have been a blooming romance.

No human being with a heart would be able to even picture children stuck on sticks with marshmallows and being roasted alive.

Please tell the sign writer that most of us like our hot food hot but we would prefer to eat it somewhere other than a clinic.

Isn’t this one self-explanatory? That also saves you from my prosaic comment.

Are commas out of stock in this mall? Are there children who are disabled, elderly and then pregnant as well?

This continues to be one of my favourite books. The photo on the cover with two pandas describes the scene very well. The one up the ladder is erasing the comma to make amends, albeit a little too late as the other, the badass action-crazy one, is leaving with a gun in hand as he ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’. 

Now this last one touched my heart and I wholly support whoever put the comma in the second line, so that we can have some more Tequila and enjoy the weekend.

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