Job Discussion Forums

[Henry_Cowell]

[Henry_Cowell]

[BearMan]

It seems. this one. has run its course . . .

Pause, when, and as, you please.

BearMan

[stillnosheep]

or The meaning of a comma is its use in the language

Rules governing punctuation are complex.

Far more interesting is the discussion around the primary function of the comma in modern English. What is it really for?

While Henry Cowell argues for the use of ellipses or other punctuation to mark pauses in speech, restricting commas for other uses (which may or may not coincide with pauses), Stephen Jones looks back to the origin of the comma.

But even if commas developed as pause markers in written speech, and even if those pauses often coincide with syntactical boundaries, not all syntactical boundaries coincide with pauses in read speech or in conversation. So upon what principles shall we base our rules?

This is not a question of right and wrong. The answer is not imposed upon the user by the rules of the language. Ultimately the community of English language users will decide the future rules of comma usage by their actions. Different sub-communities may make different decisions.

We are not a congregation waiting to decipher the word of God, neither are we a jury attempting to discover the truth. We are a community of language users deciding collectively how we wish to use commas in the future.

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

The MODS are not going to lock or delete the thread at this time.

The MODS are going to suggest that all concerned tone things down appreciably and stay on topic and far, far away from personal insults or name-calling.

If not, the MODS will take appropriate action including sanctions against individual members who choose not to follow MOD advice.

[Stephen Jones]

Let's go back to basics. The purpose of a comma is to indicate a boundary. In spoken English we use a pause for the same effect. Now we have other punctuation marks than the comma to indicate a pause - full stops, question marks and exclamation marks are the primary boundary markers (which you use depends on the status), and commas, semi-colons and colons are the secondary ones.

Following the CGEL p.1735, there is a heirarchy full stop --- colon/semi colon --- comma. This refers to the size and type of the chunks that are delimited.

In speech we would use a pause to delimit the boundary, and in general the comma would delimit a shorter pause than the full stop.

Now the point is not that the comma is used to indicate a pause, or vice-versa (that when reading we should pause when we see a comma); the point is that the comma and the pause are ways of determing syntactic or semantic boundaries and thus both are governed by the same principles.

Thus one of Attassi's earlier statements is basically true: Where there is a comma there will be a pause, but all pauses are not indicated by commas.

Even in the phrase Humphrey Davy, who invented it there is a pause, slight though it may be.

The example of Chicago, Illinois said without a pause is merely an example of writing being more conservative than speech. In the unlikely event that we all end up speaking like American sports commentators and the pause that is normally there disappears, it will not be too long before the comma follows it into obscurity.

So the comma separates the dependent units in a sentence structure in the same way that a pause does in spoken English.

What happens when a speaker uses a lot of pauses in non-standard places, or alternatively, like Henry's newsreader, misses them out where they would normally be expected? Interestingly, we can indicate the lack of an obligatory pause by missing out the obligatory comma John help me do the washing up that's sitting in the sink and my God just driving me crazy just as we can even miss out full stops to indicate a continuous flow of verborrheia, but, as HC points out, it is no longer standard to use commas to indicate excessive pauses in places where a comma would not otherwise be discretional.

Let us look at a few cases where the discretional use of a comma depends on the something other than syntactic rules. Let's take the Oxford comma.
Few would punctuate like this:
The British flag is red, white, and blue.
However many would punctuate like this:
His arguments are exquisitely expressed, thoroughly researched, and compellingly logical.
The fact that the chunks are longer makes the use of the Oxford comma more likely.
Look at this example:
Our manager is knowledgeable, dynamic, and useless.
Here the Oxford comma is stressing the disjunct between the last phrase and what comes before. And, as we would do this in spoken English with a pregnant pause, it is also conveying information as to how to read it.

The point about optional commas is that they clearly show that their usage cannot depend on syntax alone. Use of commas has changed in the last hundred years, and there is a tendency for a lighter style (for graphic as well as prosodic reasons). The rules of English grammar and syntax have not changed in that period. The only reason for putting a comma in
After dinner, the men went into the sitting room.
is, as Thurber says, to tell you to pause so the guests have time to push back the chairs and stand up.

The CGEL gives an excellent list of the factors that influence the use of the delimiting comma:

a) length and complexity of the constituent
b) whether or not there are punctuation marks nearby
c) the linear position of the constituent
d) the semantic category of an adjunct
e) the possibility of misparsing
f) prosody

Note that the sixth factor specifically refers to the representation of spoken English, and that the first and second apply to both graphically and acoustically.

To sum up, commas have not become divorced from speech, and certainly their use is not exclusively decided by grammar and syntax.

[Stephen Jones]

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

No I'm not mad, Atassi ... I thought my tone would have indicated that ...

Anyhow your answer to the question below will allow me to depart ...

The original text

'Aluminum' was the original name given to the element by Humphry Davy, who discovered it.

Atassi's treatment of the above text

[Henry_Cowell]

[Henry_Cowell]

[Stephen Jones]

[Stephen Jones]

[Stephen Jones]

And seeing we are dealing with style books, let's quote Bill Walsh, the Copy Desk Chief at the Business Desk at the Washington Post, who in his appropriately entitled second book on English style "Lapsing into a comma", states:
Commas don't seem to inspire shouting matches the way hyphens do, but opinions on their proper use probably vary even more widely. Because the comma often serves to symbolize a pause in speech, its use is subject to the vagaries of the human ear. There are hard-and-fast rules about commas, of course, but within those rules there is plenty of room for nuance and interpretation.

[Henry_Cowell]

[Henry_Cowell]