Serial commas
Jul. 7th, 2003 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tahnanOK, I'd like to settle this once and for all.
Websearching on the phrase "Ayn Rand and G-d" (though you'll want the "o" in there for the websearch) turns up all sorts of idiocy. For those who don't know, the phrase is part of a commonly-cited example showing the need for the serial comma:
Some of the idiocy is about the need for the serial comma--I happen to prefer it, myself, but many of the examples that get cited are simply useless. For instance, "Door prizes will include lab equipment, books written by members of the bio department and a fruitcake"--is there anyone who would read that to mean that the door prizes include books whose authorship is bio-prof-and-fruitcake? Such a reading would suggest the acceptability of a sentence like "Door prizes will include lab equipment, a fruitcake." Wholly spurious argument, in my opinion.
Regardless, that wasn't the idiocy I'm really posting about. The idiocy is the number of webpages that happily refer to the above quote as an actual book dedication. Sometimes as being from a book edited by Patricia Nielsen Hayden; sometimes as a book seen by James Pierce.
The first citation Google Groups has is this 1994 post by James Pierce, in which he claims that "an author...ended up with a dedication that read" the above. Which could be an anecdote or could just be a joke. Less than a month later a con report mentions that quote as being in TNH's Making Light.
The lack of any mention of an actual title for this book anywhere on the Web suggests to me that the dedication was fabricated whole-cloth as an example of the need for the serial comma. So I'd like to attempt to clear this up once and for all. Can someone on my friends list either (a) provide the title of this book, or (b) contact their friend Patricia Nielsen Hayden or James Pierce (or a friend who is the friend of one of them, or the like) to ask them to confirm or disconfirm the existence of this dedication?
(To conclude, I'd like to throw in the hypothetical book dedication I devised a year or so ago: "I dedicate this book to my parents, Donny and Marie Osmond, and my dog." Note how much clearer this dedication would be without the serial comma. And OK, out of fairness, even sources that reject always using the serial comma say it should be used when one of the last two items in the list contains an "and" to avoid ambiguity in "We had sandwiches made of tuna, jelly and cream cheese and peanut butter." But I think the point is made. Sort of.)
Websearching on the phrase "Ayn Rand and G-d" (though you'll want the "o" in there for the websearch) turns up all sorts of idiocy. For those who don't know, the phrase is part of a commonly-cited example showing the need for the serial comma:
I dedicate this book to my parents, Ayn Rand and G-d.
Some of the idiocy is about the need for the serial comma--I happen to prefer it, myself, but many of the examples that get cited are simply useless. For instance, "Door prizes will include lab equipment, books written by members of the bio department and a fruitcake"--is there anyone who would read that to mean that the door prizes include books whose authorship is bio-prof-and-fruitcake? Such a reading would suggest the acceptability of a sentence like "Door prizes will include lab equipment, a fruitcake." Wholly spurious argument, in my opinion.
Regardless, that wasn't the idiocy I'm really posting about. The idiocy is the number of webpages that happily refer to the above quote as an actual book dedication. Sometimes as being from a book edited by Patricia Nielsen Hayden; sometimes as a book seen by James Pierce.
The first citation Google Groups has is this 1994 post by James Pierce, in which he claims that "an author...ended up with a dedication that read" the above. Which could be an anecdote or could just be a joke. Less than a month later a con report mentions that quote as being in TNH's Making Light.
The lack of any mention of an actual title for this book anywhere on the Web suggests to me that the dedication was fabricated whole-cloth as an example of the need for the serial comma. So I'd like to attempt to clear this up once and for all. Can someone on my friends list either (a) provide the title of this book, or (b) contact their friend Patricia Nielsen Hayden or James Pierce (or a friend who is the friend of one of them, or the like) to ask them to confirm or disconfirm the existence of this dedication?
(To conclude, I'd like to throw in the hypothetical book dedication I devised a year or so ago: "I dedicate this book to my parents, Donny and Marie Osmond, and my dog." Note how much clearer this dedication would be without the serial comma. And OK, out of fairness, even sources that reject always using the serial comma say it should be used when one of the last two items in the list contains an "and" to avoid ambiguity in "We had sandwiches made of tuna, jelly and cream cheese and peanut butter." But I think the point is made. Sort of.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-07 11:15 am (UTC)Does that help?
--Nomi
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-07 11:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-07 11:57 am (UTC)Making Book is an excellent collection of TNH's essays and I highly recommend it.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-07 11:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-07 12:55 pm (UTC)And Henry, _Making Book_ kicks ass and you would enjoy reading it. I usually start by recommending the essay on how to get excommunicated by the Mormon church, but in your case the copyediting one might be even more fun.
And you could ask on her blog (http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/) if any books with that dedication have crossed her desk at Tor. I would bet at least one has...but as a reference to the infamous example, not the source of it.