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Why the Serial comma should be considered non-optional November 24, 2007

Why the Serial comma should be considered non-optional

While my grasp of proper grammar may be somewhat limited, one thing I do understand well is logic. Unfortunately, the fact that people tend to have a surprisingly poor grasp of basic logic may undermine the following argument, but here goes anyway.

Many of you have been taught that using a comma before the last item in a series (the “Serial” or “Oxford” comma) is optional, while this is technically true the single keystroke, or swipe of a pen, that it saves you is guaranteed to cause problems down the road.

Don’t believe me?  I have a pretty cool toaster. It will toast your bread, and poach, or hard boil, your eggs at the same time. Whilst standing over it this morning I happened to read one of the little instructional stickers that told me I could “Use cancel button to end all functions (toast, egg and egg and toast).”

Now, while technically correct there are a number of problems with this sentence. The first, and most obvious, being that it’s not at all clear where the second comma is supposed to go. Yes, I can here many of you complaining now that it’s not hard to figure out, but sometimes it is, as I’ll demonstrate in a moment, and even if it isn’t you shouldn’t force your readers to “figure out” what you were trying to say. You should say it in a way that doesn’t require deciphering. Is it toast, egg and egg, and toast? You generally have to assume the comma before the last “and.” And what about the fact that this can actually hard-boil (hard steam?) up to four eggs at a time? “Egg and egg” is a logical possibility, as is “egg and egg and egg and egg”.

The second problem is that the usage of the comma is a bit overloaded here. We’re not just it to indicate a pause, we’re also using it to delimit the items in a list. Verbally we do this with pauses, so it the comma is a sensible choice to use, but many people leave out commas when writing that they would normally include in their speech. So, the first comma in any three item list with only one comma could just be interpreted as a pause and not a list delimiter.

As promised, here’s a real world example where you can’t “figure out” the correct meaning: “Go to the store and buy milk, eggs, broccoli, macaroni and cheese.”

How many items do I expect you to return with? Is macaroni and cheese one item or two?

The Serial comma should never be considered optional. Plus, you’d use it if you were speaking so you should use it when writing if you want to convey the same thing.

P.P. Check out the toaster, but if you do get one, you must keep a can of PAM nearby. The little egg-poachey cup-thing isn’t nearly as non-stick as it looks. I’d also recommend inserting a nice slice of medium to sharp cheddar in between the bread and eggs. Mmmm nom nom nom.

P.P.S. Lots of instructional comma goodness here.

P.P.P.S Yes, I realize the statements here put me at odds with rule #9 on the page linked above. Fuck them. ;) I believe that the final sentence of rule #9 proves that the comma is appropriate there.

Through a writer’s eyes. November 19, 2007

Through a writer’s eyes.

I’ve spent most of my evenings, and weekends, this month working on my book for NaNoWriMo, which is why I haven’t been posting. I have to say that regardless of if I “win” or not it’s been an awesome experience. This afternoon just added to it.

You see, I went to one of the regular meet-ups for the Boston participants. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I wasn’t really sure what time it was supposed to be at, and ended up guessing incorrectly. But that didn’t matter, because I’ve learned that writers see the world through different eyes. My story is about a young girl (thirteen) who dies and joins the ranks of the Grim Reapers. So, I didn’t ride the T. I scanned the crowd for interesting people and pondered the various ways they might meet their demise. I contemplated the wonderful curve of a curvy black woman’s equally curvy upper lip. Oh, to kiss lips such as those…

When I arrived I had an agenda. You see, my story is set in Boston. It’s the only city I know well enough to incorporate, and the Reapers spend entirely too much time hanging out at IHOP, because it’s affordable and open later than anywhere else. So, they spend their time at the Harvard Square IHOP, which I’d never been to, but knew existed. As a result, I’ve avoided actually describing it. So today’s agenda was reconnaissance. To check out the IHOP, and the Goodwill in Central, because that showed up in the book too. But what I found by watching the world through writer’s eyes was so much better than I’d hoped for.

As I sat at my table, typing my story, and contemplating when the meet-up really was because it definitely wasn’t then, a family with a young deaf girl sat down perfectly positioned for me to watch them, which is notable, not only because of the relatively small number of deaf people in the world, but because one of the characters in my book is deaf, and the main character has found herself living with her. So I watched the young girl signing to her mom while her dad gazed out the window people-watching.

A freshmen girl with attitude to spare gave me a decidedly unpleasant look and said something that made me wish I knew how to read lips. A trio of college students sat outside in the cold and started filming one of them looking through a newspaper with eye-holes cut out of it and holding a dress shoe up beside it. One of them wore a shirt that proclaimed that he was “Not a Ninja” despite his Asian appearance, the laptop bag he had handcuffed to his wrist, or the two guitar cases they’d leaned up against a concrete column, but never opened.

And then there was the man who walked amongst the tables with people dropping off business cards with the American Sign Language alphabet on the back and a message on the front that asked if you were interested in having an experience with “the deaf” and that “Any Donation” would be accepted if you wanted to “Buy this card”. Unfortunately for the man with the cards being deaf is no excuse for not grasping the distinction between buying something and making a donation or giving the people he wanted money from absolutely not hint as to what they would be donating to (was it just him or some deaf community project) or why they would want to buy the card, unless they were so desperately in need of an ASL alphabet guide that they would put up with the almost indecipherable printing quality of this one.

I would have asked him about it but my ASL skills have been degrading (although writing this book is helping) and even when I had more signs still trapped in my brain I know from experience that my trying to sign with deaf people rarely goes over well.  They get all excited that you have actually taken the time to learn their language and then proceed to sign at a speed that risks breaking the sound barrier, which, to me, is totally incomprehensible, and then they get frustrated, and I feel like an idiot, and …. yeah. I think I’m going to take classes over at Deaf Inc. when they start up again, although they’re in risk of being challenged by my desire to take Japanese classes, which the deaf character is also (although I don’t know yet if she’s actually from Japan or just of Japanese descent). But that, is another discussion entirely… Of course, this being my life, and working in the fantabulous way that it does, there was a Japanese family sitting where I could watch and hear them too.

Then there were the chess players, playing the pick-up games of speed chess that that the Harvard Square Au Bon Pain has become so well known for. They’d play contemplatively by themselves until a stranger walked up and, through some ritual too quick to follow, joined the table. They’d sit, focusing so intently: Move, tap. Move, take, tap. Move take tap. Move tap. Move tap. The digital timer flipping and resetting the countdown from one opponent to the next with a tap from each side. The IHOP sandwiched in between a comic store, a hair salon, and an Indian restaurant, under a Thai restaurant and possibly above a Japanese restaurant was no less inspiring. Who could consistently make up a scene that cool?

My mother was an artist. Always seeing, and creating, beautiful things. But writers… they’re not limited to frozen frames of light, and the world seems to offer up such a wonderful bounty of characters. I don’t know if fiction is my forte. I know I can write well on topics I am passionate about, but I’m still learning how to translate that passion into tales that don’t yet exist, with people who don’t either.

What I do know is that I’m loving the experience, and am very grateful for this totally crazy challenge. You should totally join me next year. I’ve got this comfy couch, with plenty of nearby electrical outlets, and a ready supply of junk food just around the corner.

Spiritual reinvigoration November 10, 2007

Tonight I was awed by a student of the spoken word.
I watch a girl named Allison Miller dance the drums.
I watched a man rock the vibraphone.
And I watched a minor deity of spirit and belief move thousands of souls.

In other words, I saw an Ani Difranco concert.

Temptation November 7, 2007

I keep thinking, “Do I really need to write this integration test? I’ve already got unit tests…” and then I write it, and things blow up spectacularly. Then I think, “I could either be debugging this in a nice controlled test, or I could be clicking a link and wondering why it wasn’t coming back, and where the Stack Overflow was coming from.”

Should I test it now? November 6, 2007

Yesterday’s flow chart was designed to help with the complex issue of determining if a particular piece of code is testable. Today’s flow chart helps with the equally complex problem of determining when to write, or run, your tests. Like the last one it is distributed under the WTFPL license so please feel free to use wherever and however you want.

Is it testable? November 5, 2007

Is it testable?

Apparently some people are having trouble with determining if the code they’ve written is testable. So I’ve put together this flow chart to help you navigate through this complex decision making process. The image is distributed under the WTFPL license so please feel free to use wherever and however you want.