Update on Wayansgate 2009
Last week I posted an item that I thought would be entirely uncontroversial. It was simply a list of mistakes made by major North American newspapers in their reviews of the movie “Dance Flick.” The movie was made by several members of the Wayans family, which led to errors along these lines:
“The Wayans (should be Wayanses) keep making the same movie.”
“Like the Wayans’ (Wayanses’) last movie, this one is no good.”
“I hope this is the Wayans’s (Wayanses’) last movie.
“All those Wayans’ (Wayanses) should know better.”
As I said, I didn’t expect any controversy here. Plurals of last names are formed the same way as plurals of other nouns: by adding “s” or “es.” The only common exception is that last names ending in “y” don’t change to “ies” (e.g., baby/babies, but Murphy/Murphys). And once it’s pluralized, you show possession the same way: by adding an apostrophe. My boss, my many bosses, my many bosses’ offices. One Wayans, several Wayanses, the Wayanses’ latest movie.
Yet as soon as I posted it, there was dissent. Like so many Internet conversations, a lot of people who didn’t know anything about the subject wanted to talk about it anyway, presumably because they enjoy the clickety-clack sound their keyboards make when they type on them. But there were others who knew about things like “style manuals” who nonetheless insisted these newspapers’ mistakes were not mistakes at all.
This seemed CRAZY to me. The rules about forming plurals and plural possessives aren’t a “gray area” in grammar, nor do they differ from one style guide to the next. The rules are as cut and dried as “he” and “him” not being interchangeable because one is a subject pronoun and the other is an object pronoun. If you say “John sat next to Mary and I,” you are WRONG, period. It should be “Mary and me.” You’ll get the same answer in any grammar guide you consult. It’s as elementary as 2 plus 2 equaling 4.
The most persistent argument came from a fellow named Bryon. His reasoning, as I eventually came to understand it, went along these lines. To show possession for a singular noun, you simply add ‘s. Everyone knows that: Mary’s implants, Bill’s bankruptcy hearing, Susan’s birth mother, etc. Logically, the same rule should apply even if the name already ends in s: James’s undescended testicle, Thomas’s superfluous third nipple, etc. But some style guides — notably the Associated Press Stylebook, the bible for almost every newspaper in America — dictate that you drop the s, simply to make it cleaner and more readable: Gus’ tow truck, Ross’ weird lesions, and so forth. Like I said, according to all logic, that should be wrong. But it’s been adopted as a permissible alternative, and endorsed by many reputable grammarians. And since it’s what the AP does, it’s very familiar to anyone who ever reads a newspaper.
Bryon’s reasoning was that since this “wrong” method is acceptable, and has been for many years, couldn’t there be an alternative to the weird-looking Wayanses and Wayanses’ situation, too? Might not the L.A. Times and these other papers be doing this on purpose, to avoid the awkwardness of Wayanses and Wayanses’?
Well, yes, I suppose, they might. They wouldn’t, and they don’t, and they haven’t, but yes, it is technically within the realm of possibility, given the known laws of the universe, that they MIGHT.
With the James’/James’s thing, the reader knows exactly what you mean either way. It’s almost like an alternative spelling: Whether you write “canceled” or “cancelled” (one favored by some guides, the other by others), your meaning is clear. Preferring James’ over James’s makes the arrangement of letters and punctuation marks prettier without sacrificing clarity.
But if you decide Wayanses looks weird and choose to pluralize Wayans as Wayans — exactly the same as the singular — well, now you’ve introduced ambiguity. The reader has to look at the accompanying verbs (“Wayans is”; “the Wayans are”) to know whether you mean singular or plural. Wayanses might “look weird” due to its infrequency, but at least it’s clear what you mean: You mean more than one Wayans.
More to the point, the James’/James’s thing is well established. That IS one of the areas where different guides will have different answers. No style book anywhere in the English-speaking world has so far endorsed this alternative Wayans/Wayanses thing, and there was NO WAY any of these newspapers had done it on purpose. Newspapers might differ on matters of style here and there (“website” vs. “Web site,” for example), but they don’t break solid, black-and-white rules of GRAMMAR like how to pluralize proper nouns.
But now people were arguing with THAT idea, saying we didn’t really know what the newspapers were thinking without asking them. It became apparent that the issue was not going to die until we had it straight from the L.A. Times’ mouth that they had, in fact, made a mistake, and that their in-house style did not call for pluralizing last names ending in s by doing nothing.
This was further craziness. It was as if the Queen of England had appeared in a parade with her dress tucked into her panties, and now it was being suggested that maybe she’d done it that way on purpose because it was easier and looked better. And now I was going to have to ASK her: “Pardon me, your majesty, but I noticed your dress is tucked into your knickers. This fellow over here actually prefers it that way over the regular way, and he thinks you might agree with him and chose that style on purpose. I maintain that it was merely an accident, and that you will be embarrassed to have it pointed out. Could you clarify the matter for us?”
Wishing to have the matter settled, I e-mailed the senior copy chief at the Los Angeles Times:
The Times’ staff page lists you as senior copy chief for the arts & entertainment section, so I’m hoping you can clear up a debate that has erupted on a blog entry I posted the other day. (link provided)
In it, I listed several notable publications — including the L.A. Times — that had, in their reviews of the movie “Dance Flick,” referred to members of the Wayans family as “the Wayans,” when the correct plural should be “Wayanses.” (Their last name is Wayans, after all, not Wayan.)
The Times also used this phrase: “the Wayans’ deadly funny ‘Scary Movie.’” This should be “the Wayanses’ deadly funny ‘Scary Movie,’” should it not?
All of this seemed simple enough to me, yet some people posting comments on my blog took issue with it. One commenter in particular seems to believe that since “Wayanses” (and its possessive, “Wayanses’”) looks so strange, perhaps the Times has developed an in-house style that forms the plural of “Wayans” as “Wayans,” and the plural possessive as “Wayans’.”
I maintain, on the other hand, that the writer simply made a mistake, and the copy desk failed to catch it. It’s an easy mistake to make, since the singular “Wayans” already looks like a plural.
The debate seems foolish to me. I worked in the daily newspaper biz for many years, and I can’t imagine a reputable paper intentionally choosing an ungrammatical style just to avoid words that “look weird.” But I can’t seem to put the matter to rest without an authoritative voice from the Times declaring one way or the other.
Can you, therefore, either defend the use of Wayans/Wayans’, or acknowledge that an error was made? My experience with copy editors is that they tend to share my love of grammar and language, so I hope you agree that 1) this is VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS! and 2) the record should be set straight once and for all.
Thank you,
Eric D. Snider
The senior copy chief forwarded my message to her superior, Asst. Managing Editor Henry Fuhrmann. He replied as follows:
Dear Mr. Snider:
Thanks for your note regarding plural references to the ever-prolific Wayans family….
I agree that the proper plural is “Wayanses.” We certainly have no internal policies based on whether words look funny; the rules of usage are clear, and we do our best to follow them. In this case, we simply erred.
I hope this helps you set the record straight with your readers. It’s good to know about your blog, though I’m sorry that it took an error to bring your work to our attention.
Best,
HenryP.S. We were also guilty of inconsistency. The subheadline on the May 22 review of “Dance Flick” uses “Wayanses.” That shows that we did know the rules but failed to apply them uniformly (i.e., we’re human).
So. I hope that settles it. If nothing else, the whole incident is a reminder that no matter how clear-cut something is, there will always be someone who disagrees with it. I assume that in the comments, some joker will explain how sometimes 2 plus 2 doesn’t equal 4, either.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
At the risk of just being another commenter who loves to hear the clickety clack of my keyboard I have to say this:
That was awesome.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
The whole thing was worth it for that grammar nazi graphic.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
You went to a lot of trouble proving you were right.
But we all go to extreme measures to show we are right and to laugh at the people who were wrong.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Well, sure, in non-euclydian geometry using imaginary numbers, 2 + 2 RARELY equals 4. I mean, the very idea of 2 + 2 equaling 4 is preposterous.
I’m pretty sure that every part of what I just said is wrong, but I just wanted an excuse to publicly use the phrase “imaginary numbers.” I can’t say it out lout without giggling.
Ooh, here’s a question for you, Eric. When does punctuation fall inside a single or double quote mark, and when does it fall outside? This question has plagued me to the point where I will rearrange a sentence just so that I won’t be in the situation where I have to decide.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Hey, maybe you’ll get nice plug from the L.A. Times on your web site. (website)
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Never mind the plural version of Wayans (even though you are right); how about EVERYONE putting the idiotic hack bit of using _____-gate to EVERY controversy/dispute already???
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I wonder if anyone’s ever noticed that I hardly ever post comments on my own site, except in matters of grammar and punctuation, when there is usually a clear right or wrong answer.
Cameron, it is easy to remember whether punctuation goes inside or outside the quotation marks. Periods and commas always always always always always go INSIDE. Always. In every case. Always.
For other punctuation marks, they go inside or outside depending on whether they are part of the material being quoted. For example:
Have you seen “Gladiator”?
I just watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?”
I enjoy “South Pacific”; “Oklahoma!” is another matter.
These are the American rules, by the way. In other English-speaking countries, periods and commas are like other punctuation and go inside or outside the quotation marks depending on whether they’re part of the material being quoted. So in England, you’ll get things like: He said he was part of a “grassroots organization”, but didn’t define it. In America, the comma would go inside the quotation mark. That looks much better to me, but that’s probably because I’m American.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Look ma – a Newspaper Honcho admitted he was human!
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Also, Eric D. Snider, thank you for the quote-marks clarification.
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
This whole debate has been so fun. But then again, I used to be an editor, so maybe my sense of ‘fun’ is skewed.
By the way, I think the English rules for punctuation and quotation marks make more sense than the American rules. Though my understanding is that even in America, punctuation goes outside single quotes. Of course, it’s been awhile since I’ve consulted a style guide, so I could be wrong.
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
*Ahem*
“And once its pluralized, you show possession the same way…”
its should be it’s
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
In a mod 3 group, 2 + 2 = 1.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I hate to nit-pick (not really true) but since you were kind enough to provide us with the Queen’s English alternative, might I deign to point out that in England, the actual spelling would be “organisation”?
That is all.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:06 pm
“Periods and commas always always always always always go INSIDE. Always. In every case. Always.”
I always use this rule except to avoid ambiguity. Certainly this is always true for published works. Maybe I’m wrong, please tell me if my reasoning for breaking the rule is correct:
I work for an online educator. Frequently I make suggestions to the Web people in our office to correct misspelled words and other grammar errors. In doing so I often send them comments like
Please change “its” to “it’s”, unless a possessive was intended.
and
Please change “affect” to “effect”.
My reasoning in doing this is to avoid the possibility the Web people add the punctuation into the corrected word. Should I be putting the periods inside the quote marks even so?
Since my instructions are unpublished I guess it doesn’t matter, but I always always always break this rule in such instances to avoid introducing new problems into the copy. What do you think?
Stupidramblings
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Stupidramblings: Surely the people you’re correcting aren’t dumb enough to think you’re suggesting they add random commas and periods to the text. If they were confused by that, mightn’t they also think you meant for them to put quotation marks around the words you spotlighted? But you know them better than I do, so yeah, you should do whatever is necessary to communicate with them clearly.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I just watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?”
Eric, do you often end a sentence with no punctuation (?)
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Stupidramblings:
My understanding is that in the examples you provided, you would use single quotes, not double quotes, in which case the punctuation would go outside the quote marks:
Please change ‘its’ to ‘it’s’, unless a possessive was intended.
And both rules together:
“Please change ‘affect’ to ‘effect’,” he wrote.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I’m guessing you think I should have written:
I just watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?.”
or possibly
I just watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?”.
How often have you seen such a construction in your daily reading? The answer is hopefully never, because it’s wrong. If a sentence ends with an exclamation point or question mark — even one that’s inside of a quote — that’s all the punctuation you need to indicate the sentence is over.
You could still add a question mark or exclamation point, though, if necessary:
You want me to watch “Dude, Where’s My Car?”? No! I refuse to watch “Dude, Where’s My Car?”!
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Amp, I can’t find anything suggesting that single quotes are treated any differently from double quotes. Periods and commas always go inside them, whether they’re single or double.
He said, “I have never seen ‘Gladiator.’”
not
He said, “I have never seen ‘Gladiator’.”
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
The question mark is only punctuation for the title of the movie, and does not end your sentence. It’s only function is to convey the full title of the movie watched. Unless, of course, you are asking incredulously, “I just watched ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?”
However, without context, the reader is left to interpret the ambiguous sentence as an incredulous query. That may have been your intent, but it’s not clear. I’m still not convinced that the question mark in the title of the movie can be used as end punctuation for the sentence, particularly given your last suggestion of the additional question mark or use of an exclamation point if necessary.
In any case, it appeared to me to be a declarative sentence which should be written as
I just watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?”.
I believe that if it’s allowed and it clarifies the writer’s meaning, use it. Which is why I have begun a personal campaign against omitting the comma before “and” and “or” in a series. I have seen enough sentences where the omission causes confusion between the ultimate and penultimate items in the list .
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
However, without context, the reader is left to interpret the ambiguous sentence as an incredulous query.
Ah, but they shouldn’t be. If it were an incredulous query, the question mark would have gone outside the quotation marks. Appearing inside, it indicates that it is part of the title of the film, not part of a question I am asking.
I’m still not convinced that the question mark in the title of the movie can be used as end punctuation for the sentence
You would be convinced if you looked at any grammar or usage guide in the English language (or, as I suggested, keep an eye out in any professionally written and edited publication, such as a newspaper or magazine).
The Chicago Manual of Style:
Neither a period (aside from an abbreviating period) nor a comma ever accompanies a question mark or an exclamation point. The latter two marks, being stronger, take precedence over the first two. If a question mark and an exclamation point are both called for, only the mark more appropriate to the context should be retained.
Other guides say basically the same thing. And, again, just look to see how often the construction you’re suggesting appears in professionally edited publications. It doesn’t. That’s usually a pretty good indication that something is a rule, when it’s followed 99.9999999% of the time in books and newspapers.
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Or you could take the descriptivist approach used in Linguistics and say that language is defined by its usage rather than any specific set of rules. Lately, I tend to think more along these lines, as long as the usage is relatively unambiguous in intention. FWIW.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Re: single quotes
Not to belabor the point (I’m not typing to hear the clickety-clack; rather, I’m trying to save face), but punctuation outside of single quotes was the standard practice at the (obscure, granted) philosophy journal I edited. As I recall, the practice in general is very common in philosophical texts, but perhaps that’s because so many writers are European. Or maybe the journal I worked on was just wrong, and I was led astray….
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I would just like to say that this is the most educational experience I’ve had on this website in the six years I’ve been following it.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Yes, Simon. Descriptivist linguists are free to observe people like Eric enforce a certain set of rules until they become ingrained in use.
I hate it when the descriptivists come rolling around in these conversations. It’s like they’re worried we won’t know that they exist. Trust me, we know. Who cares that you have a master’s in linguistics when all you do now is deliver pizzas or securities, as the case may be?
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Who would’ve thought that the Wayans family could provide an informative, and often entertaining, discussion on the internet about punctuation? Please, don’t let this be one of the signs of the apocalypse…..
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Amp: Yeah, the Europeanness probably explains it. What I cited is how the American books define the rules, but like I said, it’s done differently in other English-speaking countries. There is a certain logic to it, particularly in cases like you mentioned. On the other hand, I like the American way because it’s easy to remember to just put all the quotation marks, single and double, after the comma or period, rather than having to figure out case-by-case what goes where.
The descriptivists (those who say the “rules” don’t matter as long as the reader understands what you’re saying) and prescriptivists (those who say no, we have RULES, and they ought to be followed) have long been at war. As with most conflicts, the reasonable approach is somewhere in the middle. I’m more of a prescriptivist, as you might guess; I like law and order and uniformity. But without descriptivism, a lot of perfectly useful words, phrases, and constructions would still be considered wrong because they were technically wrong when they originated. The language is a living thing, ever evolving, and you have to allow for that.
On the other hand, if descriptivism is taken to its extreme, then you get chaos. You get “your” being acceptable in the sentence “I think your an idiot” because, after all, you know what the speaker means, don’t you? In fact, many in the audience wouldn’t even know anything was amiss. So what’s the harm? I don’t think even the most zealous descriptivist would take it that far, but that’s what staunch prescriptivists fear — the slippery slope.
I feel like you shouldn’t break the rules without knowing what they are first. Good writers can toy with the language, create figures of speech, turn nouns into verbs, do things that are technically “wrong” but that are useful for effect. But you have to know what you’re doing. You can tell the difference between a writer who has done something unorthodox intentionally and one who simply doesn’t know any better and thought he was being correct.
And besides, in a conversation about what’s right or wrong, as we’re having here, the descriptivist approach is kind of useless. Yes, you can put a period after that quotation mark if you don’t believe in the rules anyway. It’s like an atheist arguing with a Catholic about whether the Catholic is saying his prayers properly. There’s an assumption, in conversations like this, that the parties involved are interested in following the rules — hence their desire to know what the rules are.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
As a school teacher, I appreciate anyone who tries to encourage proper grammar and spelling. Thanks Eric!
Also, in base 3, 2 + 2 = 11.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:51 am
Now that we’ve put the Wayans issue to bed, can we have a flame war about how to pronounce “erred”?
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
Eric, what’s the deal with commas in a list? Someone else brought it up earlier in this post, and I’ve noticed in quite a few places that the punctuation is being used differently than how I always thought it was supposed to be.
I always thought the correct form was:
They swallowed the bogus argument hook, line, and sinker.
But lately, and frequently, I’ve seen this used:
They swallowed the bogus argument hook, line and sinker.
Which is correct? Are they both acceptable?
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:16 am
All off this debate really does not answered the central issue: why are anyone talked about Dance Flick anyway? Seriously, that am like complaining that a Necronomicon lack cohesive narrative structure. Its certainly true and worth pointing out, but its not exactly the worst aspect.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:35 am
“Surely the people you’re correcting aren’t dumb enough to think you’re suggesting they add random commas and periods to the text.”–EDS
Exactly.
It’s not a matter that they’re dumb, not at all. They’re computer people, not grammar people. I’m always surprised how my notes to them get interpreted.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:39 am
Every once in a while, I love to discover anew that we humans really are a rather ridiculous species. Grammar and etiquette discussions: arguing about rules that are wholly arbitrary to begin with.
That certainly doesn’t make the discussion any less fun.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:37 am
I’m still wondering if third nipples are always superfluous…
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:59 am
*Ahem*
“The most persistent argument came from a fellow named Bryon. His…”
you also misspelled the name “Byron” throughout your article
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:40 am
I am proud of the LA Times in actually responding and admitting their mistake. Most bloggers would go back and fix their mistake, claiming they never occurred.
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:05 am
Maxo, if you care to look at the original post you’ll find the fellow’s name actually is Bryon, strange as that is. I, myself, mistakenly called him Byron since that’s what it looks like. But it really is Brian spelled differently.
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:43 am
Ohh! I hate it when people do creative spelling of a child’s name.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:10 am
Turkey: Look at the winking emoticon.
Chris: Whether or not you put a comma before the last item in a series (hook, line[,] and sinker) depends on who assigned you to do the writing. The AP Stylebook says not to use it: hook, line and sinker. Hence, that’s what you’ll see in most newspapers and magazines. (AP allows for it if the sentence would be confusing or ambiguous otherwise.) The logic is that the “and” (or “or”) serves the same purpose in that situation as a comma would, so there’s no need for the comma. Like most journalism style rules, it’s a space-saving tactic.
But pretty much every other style says you SHOULD use it, and there’s really no reason not to. (It’s one of the few things I’ve consciously retrained myself on since leaving the newspaper biz.) Bryan A. Garner, in “Garner’s Modern American Usage” — a book I highly recommend for this sort of thing — sums it up succinctly: “Omitting the final comma may cause ambiguities, whereas including it never will.” And that’s ultimately what all punctuation rules come down to: making the writing as clear and expressive as possible.
By the way, that final comma is known as the serial comma, Harvard comma, or Oxford comma, as recently immortalized in the Vampire Weekend song “Oxford Comma.” (Opening line: “Who gives a **** about an Oxford comma?”)
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Speaking of commas, my mom gave me a book to read called “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.” It claims to be a New York Times Bestseller. I started reading it through and I was overwhelmed by the comma usage in that book as it seems like 95% of the sentences in it contain commas. My mom thinks it’s a writing style, but I am not so sure… I would love a professional opinion.
Here is an example from the first page:
“Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea.”
“To the front, an acacia tree, the thorn tree which dots the wide edges of the Kalahari; the great white thorns, a warning; the olive-grey leaves, by contrast, so delicate.”
So many commas! Are all of these necessary? Are they all correct? I have a hard time believing they are, but I would also expect that an editor would have fixed them if they were not. (And I’m not referring to the list commas, I know they are correct.) Please help put my mind at ease!
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Learning can be fun! Let’s start an on-line petition (since those always work) for Eric to be an English teacher!
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Thank you for bringing meaning to that Vampire Weekend song! I listen to their music and even sing along with the lyrics but never thought to google what an Oxford comma or a Mansard roof is.
This blog is becoming very enlightening!
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
Christina D: I put the question back to you: Which commas would you remove? Try taking one out and see if it looks right. It don’t, do it?
If the author had wanted to reduce his comma usage, he could have done so. For example, in To the front, an acacia tree, the comma could be replaced with the word was. Likewise, the great thorns, a warning could be the great thorns were a warning. In that sense, your mom is right about it being a writing style. None of the commas in the example you gave are wrong, though, to answer your question.
The comma is the most flexible of all punctuation. There are instances where a comma is absolutely required (and places where it would absolutely be wrong), but quite a bit of its usage has more to do with the particular mood and style the writer wants to convey. Readers pause slightly at the sight of a comma — that’s the purpose of it — so a writer asks: Do I want the reader to pause here? Here’s an example:
My friend and his girlfriend were having a fight, but I went out to dinner with them anyway, which of course proved to be a huge mistake.
Technically, the phrase “of course” ought to be set off by commas. It’s an interruption in the flow of the main sentence — but I don’t want it to be. I don’t want the reader to pause there. I want it to sound like relaxed, informal speech, with “of course” rushed past without stopping.
In fact, all of the following are perfect allowable, with the variations subtly changing the emphasis and style of the sentence.
My friend and his girlfriend were having a fight, but I went out to dinner with them anyway — which of course proved to be a huge mistake.
My friend and his girlfriend were having a fight, but I went out to dinner with them anyway, which — of course — proved to be a huge mistake.
My friend and his girlfriend were having a fight, but I went out to dinner with them anyway. Which, of course, proved to be a huge mistake.
My friend and his girlfriend were having a fight, but I went out to dinner with them anyway. Which of course proved to be a huge mistake.
My friend and his girlfriend were having a fight, but I went out to dinner with them anyway (which of course proved to be a huge mistake).
As a writer, I would choose whichever one best conveyed the feeling — the exact tone and level of formality — that I was going for. This is especially important if you’re writing humor. Comedy is all about timing, and in writing, “timing” means punctuation, particularly the ever-useful comma and dash.
June 3rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
Ah, that makes sense Eric. I feel little more educated now. I guess the writer just really, really, really likes commas.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“I assume that in the comments, some joker will explain how sometimes 2 plus 2 doesn’t equal 4, either.”
2 cups of water plus 2 cups of popped popcorn does not equal 4 cups of soggy popcorn.
Do I win a prize?
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
This whole debate demonstrates one of my favorite things about the English language: its malleability. If I don’t know a rule, I can just reword my sentence to write around it. For example instead of the unsure closing punctuation of…
–I just saw “Dude, Where’s My Car?”
…we could write…
–Have you seen “Dude, Where’s My Car?” I just did.
All it takes is a little creativity and lateral thinking, and you can write around unknown rules all you want. And, if you have the gigantic luxury of having your writing published, you can just write whatever you feel like and trust the copy editor and proofreader to clean it up for you.
And on a completely different note: I’ve noticed, when discussing movie viewing, people use the verb forms of “to see” when they view a movie theatrically and the verb forms of “to watch” when they view a movie on DVD at home. Perhaps it’s an instinctive thing, because I’ve never seen any rules on it. Any takers on this one?
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I hate putting the punctuation mark inside the quotes when it’s not part of what’s being quoted. I’d write something like this:
I loved the movie “Gladiator”!
It looks right, doesn’t it? But I KNOW that’s wrong. I’ve got the ruler-scars to show it. (No I don’t.) Still, I pretty much only put the punctuation inside the quotes when it’s somebody speaking, and the punctuation is in essence part of the quote.
This deliberate bad-grammar choice is why I’m still not a professional writer. Likely the only reason, in fact. I’m quite awesome otherwise.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I do the same thing Randy. It just makes sense to me to do it that way, even though I know it’s wrong too.
Does that make me a bad person?
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
This is such a fun conversation to read.
I particularly like the conversation about descriptive vs. prescriptive. I was always reprimanded as a child when I used the word snuck (i.e. I snuck out of the house.) Snuck is not a word, I was always told. It should be sneaked. But sneaked doesn’t sound like as valid a word as snuck. (On the other hand, snuck doesn’t look like a word when typed, while sneaked does.) But when I tried to reprimand my own children about it, they got out the dictionary and there it was; snuck was included as an alternate form of the past tense of sneak. It had been added to the dictionary by those pesky descriptivists. I have to get by on the satisfaction that the Firefox spell-check doesn’t recognize snuck (nor does it recognize descriptivist.)
Now I wonder if the periods go before closing the parentheses, as I have done above, or do they follow a different rule than quotes.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Oops, that should have been e.g. rather than i.e.
Another common mistake.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I hate putting the punctuation mark inside the quotes when it’s not part of what’s being quoted. I’d write something like this:
I loved the movie “Gladiator”!
It looks right, doesn’t it? But I KNOW that’s wrong.
Uh, no, Randy, that’s RIGHT. The exclamation point goes outside the quotation mark because it’s not part of the material being quoted (i.e., the movie title “Gladiator”). So you SHOULD hate putting the punctuation mark inside the quotes when it’s not part of what’s being quoted, because to do so would be wrong.
To repeat: Commas and periods always go inside quotation marks, always always always. Other punctuation goes inside or outside depending on whether it’s actually part of the thing being quoted.
Whome: That period should have gone outside the parentheses, because the parenthetical material is not a full sentence by itself.
Firefox doesn’t recognize snuck (nor does it recognize descriptivist).
Firefox doesn’t recognize snuck. (It also doesn’t recognize descriptivist.)
See?
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I swear that winking emoticon wasn’t there when I read it the first time.
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Christina:
I wonder if ol’ James Patterson is just religiously following an English teacher’s suggestion of never using passive verbs (it is Patterson, right?)
If you want someone who isn’t afraid of starting a description with “there were,” I suggest Raymond Chandler for your mystery needs. If you need someone more modern, then Robert B. Parker.
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I’ve always wondered about the specific rules for various punctuation-within-parentheses situations. In fact, just moments ago I left a comment on Film.com where I broke this rule. Whoops. I honestly hope to one day have the type of encyclopedic knowledge of grammar that Eric seems to have, as it is often times hard for me to take seriously the otherwise valid thoughts, expressed in the written word, of people who abuse/disregard the established rules of the language. (Obviously, I too am guilty of this at times.) In my opinion, it really does make a difference.
Hopefully, that test parenthetical statement was done correctly. All of this grammar-related criticism has made me very self-conscious about the whole thing! In fact, I just might be too paranoid to listen to myself type words on the internet from now on. Thanks a lot, Eric.
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Savvy, I think most punctuation rules are fairly logical, even mathematical. If the punctuation applies to the thing in parentheses, then it should go inside the parentheses too, right? And if it doesn’t, then it should go outside. So you can have parenthetical phrases that get their own punctuation (if you can imagine!), and then the larger sentence needs something to end it, too (right?).
Then again, sometimes logic fails us. As has been noted, I watched “Dude, Where’s My Car?” really should have a period after the question mark, since the question mark only applies to the film title and not to the larger sentence. Furthermore, as demonstrated at the end of the last paragraph, you CAN have a period after a question mark if there’s a parentheses between them.
But for the most part: logical.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:48 am
As a last-name “s” denizen, I found this debate fascinating. I already have an unusual last name, and people were even more baffled by the plural. “We’re glad to have the Kuecks here,” as Eric points out, is wrong: it should be “Kueckses.”
I find your prescriptivism both endearing and potentially dangerous. In spoken English, especially, descriptive linguistics (what people do say over what they should), definitely has a place, and doesn’t always merit curmudgeonliness. (Another activity for your 78-year-old-in-a-34-year-old’s-body grumblings: random acts of apostrophe-adding terrorism!) I think it’s interesting that Lynne Truss, a self-declared grammar fascist, frequently is (a) inconsistent, (b) doesn’t follow the style guides. There’s a good New Yorker piece on this phenomenon.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Speaking of words that look weird, I never like “savvy” in Arial.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:52 am
And, going after the not-so-coveted comment trifecta, I wanted to comment that this snuck v. sneaked issue is interesting, since the past tenses of verbs usually become more regular over time, not the other way around. Anyone have online access to the OED?
June 4th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
This is the best debate ever.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
This makes my head ache. It is an unbelievably awesome debate, and rather hilarious, but the sheer grammatical correctness of it all is rather confounding.
On the other hand, that was a pretty cool sentence, based on word choice.
And also, to Seth of the soggy popcorn: you are cool. I would give you a prize if I was allowed to issue that sort of thing.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
This is a great post and gets me to thinking, and maybe this was brought up already in the comments, but can someone (Eric, anyone) explain to me when and how it became acceptable to say “AN historic event,place,moment…” I hear newscasters say this all the time and it irks me to no end. The H isn’t silent, it’s not like “an homage, an honest truth”, etc., so why does “AN Historic” get a pass? It seems like this is a fairly recently added “rule”, and I’ve always said “a historic…”. Thanks for this post Eric.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Eric and Randy: I know that you know that you would put the movie title “Gladiator” in quotation marks only in a newspaper or in an online format where you can’t use italics or underlining. (Although you, Eric, could have un-italicized and un-quotation-marked it in your comment, as evidenced by the fact that you italicized other text.) I often elect to use all caps for titles in italics-deficient circumstances.
matt: “There was” and “There were” are not passive.
FYE: I’ve always understood that the practice of placing periods and commas inside quotation marks started among typesetters who thought it looked neater than leaving them outside, and that in addition to saving space, the omission of serial commas in newspapers also saves tons of ink! Think about not having to print millions upon millions of extra dots every day!
Who wants to calculate the savings for us?
Also — PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, people of the English-speaking world, STOP USING an apostrophe+s to PLURALIZE words!!! (can I add a few more?) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (thank you)
“(nor did it recognize descriptivist)” = priceless
I [heart] grammar.
June 6th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Svengali: For many English-speakers, the “h” in “historic” is not pronounced, or not pronounced very clearly, in which case it feels more natural to say “an historic.” It’s because the stress in “historic” comes on the second syllable, rather than the first, and the “his-” part gets lost. That’s why nobody says, for example, “an housekeeper” or “an history” — the “h” is pronounced clearly enough to make “a” the natural-sounding article. But yes, it’s properly “a historic,” and it should always be that way in writing.
C: There’s no reason to underline anything. Underlining is what you do if you don’t have access to italics. But you’re right that it’s a newspaper style to simply use quotation marks on things that would in other cases be italicized (or, if you were on a typewriter, underlined). I don’t know if I’ll ever retrain myself on that, even though I write exclusively for the Internets now. It’s so much easier — and no less acceptable — to type a quotation mark than it is to type less-than-sign, em, greater-than-sign. And yet I agree that movie titles look better in italics. Such a dilemma.
June 6th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Ahhh, what would we do without such dilemmas to discuss during our time online? (I’m glad you’re on the Internets because I don’t live in Portland and couldn’t get hard copies.)
And yes, underlining is for old people with typewriters or young people writing in-class essays in my wife’s high school English classes. Her head almost exploded when she saw this thread, BTW — to paraphrase another teacher’s frustration, teaching grammar to this generation is like trying to split firewood with a pumpkin for a hammer and a pancake for a wedge.
June 9th, 2009 at 9:17 am
regarding the punctuation and quotations discussion–from digg:
http://everything2.com/title/The%2520slow%2520reversal%2520of%2520periods%2520and%2520quotation%2520marks
June 10th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
C: To be fair, I am a member of “this generation”, and some of us take our grammatical correctness very seriously. I do sympathize with your wife, though – those of us who care about comma placement are definitely in the minority. (Before anyone points it out, I am Australian, so I get a pass for putting my comma outside the quotation marks in my first sentence. It’s the correct thing to do over here.)
February 25th, 2010 at 8:00 am
I’VE SUSSED IT!!!!
It’s all because the Wayans are a tribe. “The Navajo are one of the few tribes who’s reservation’s are on they’re traditional lands’.” “The Aztec no longer practise there humen sacrifice’s.”