grammar

For Want of an Oxford Comma, a Court Case Decided

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The importance of the Oxford Comma prevails again! This time, it has helped win a court case:

Maine’s law says the following activities do not qualify for overtime pay: “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce; (2) Meat and fish products; and (3) Perishable foods.”

The drivers claimed the lack of a comma between “shipment” and “or distribution” meant the legislation applied only to the single activity of “packing”, rather than to “packing” and “distribution” as two separate activities. (They are correct!)

And because drivers distribute the goods, but do not pack them, they argued they were therefore eligible for overtime pay – backdated over several years. The court sided with the drivers.

Judge Barron, in the opening statement, wrote: “For want of a comma, we have this case.”

An amazing victory for the drivers and grammar nerds everywhere.

 

Which Begs The Question?

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In the “today I learned” department, I had heretofore had no idea that the phrase “begs the question” is a fallacy and should not be used. Here’s Wikipedia’s explanation:

Begging the question is one of the classic informal fallacies in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. Some modern authors consider begging the question to be a species of circulus in probando (Latin, “circle in proving”) or circular reasoning. Were it not begging the question, the missing premise would render the argument viciously circular, and while never persuasive, arguments of the form “A therefore A” are logically valid because asserting the premise while denying the self-same conclusion is a direct contradiction. In general, validity only guarantees the conclusion must follow given the truth of the premises. Absent that, a valid argument proves nothing: the conclusion may or may not follow from faulty premises—although in this particular example, it’s self-evident that the conclusion is false if and only if the premise is false (see logical equivalence, logical equality and law of identity.

I know I’ve written dozens of papers in high school and college where I started a sentence with “Which begs the question, …” The proper alternative is “Which raises the question.”

The Magic of the Em-Dash

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Writing for The New York Times, Ben Yagodo reminisces on the magic of the em dash (—):

To get a sense of some of the things a dash can do, take a look at these pairs of quotes.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”:

Thirty: the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

Henry James, referring to Henry David Thoreau:

He was worse than a provincial, he was parochial.

He was worse than a provincial—he was parochial.

Mark Twain in “Autobiography”:

…life does not consist mainly (or even largely) of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

…life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar”:

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others: his last breath.

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his last breath.

In all cases, both versions make sense and are grammatically correct. But the ones with the dash (the ones the authors actually wrote) seem to live and breathe, while the others just lie there on the page. Like hitting the right combination of buttons in a computer game, typing two hyphens on the keyboard — and thereby making a dash — can give your prose a burst of energy, as if by magic.

Did you know the em dash is also known as a mutton?

Grammar as Litmus Test in Hiring

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Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, writes about his interview process at his company. In particular, candidates must pass a mandatory grammar test:

Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can’t distinguish between “to” and “too,” their applications go into the bin.

Of course, we write for a living. iFixit.com is the world’s largest online repair manual, and Dozuki helps companies write their own technical documentation, like paperless work instructions and step-by-step user manuals. So, it makes sense that we’ve made a preemptive strike against groan-worthy grammar errors.

But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn’t make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re.

I absolutely approve of this process and wish more companies had similar initiatives. I am a huge stickler for proper grammar (I’ve been nicknamed “Grammarian” in my high school and college years), and I judge people who use poor grammar. As Wiens writes: “If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use “it’s,” then that’s not a learning curve I’m comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.”

Writing Advice from C.S. Lewis

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In June of 1956, a young American fan named Joan Lancaster sent C.S. Lewis a letter. Lancaster received a letter back in which C.S. Lewis offered the following writing advice:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’timplement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

A lot of these tips appear in Stephen King’s On Writing. But it’s good to know when/how writing tips are recycled and offered as wisdom time and time again.

Readings: Facebook MD, Trading, Rainbow Toad, Tweeting Birds, Dominion of Melchizedek

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What I’ve read online today:

(1) “How Facebook Saved My Son’s Life” [Slate] – amazing story of how Facebook friends of one mother, Deborah Kogan, recognized symptoms of the rare Kawasaki disease in her young son, all while doctors missed the initial diagnosis…

(2) “How Hard Is It To Become the Michael Jordan of Trading?” [The Big Picture] – if you’ve ever wondered the statistics on what it takes to become a professional athlete, this post provides some numbers:

The talent pool gets much more competitive at the college level. The NCAA estimates approximately 3% of HS basketball players, and 6% of HS football and baseball players make an NCAA team.

If those number look daunting, the cut is far more challenging at the professional level. In basketball, only 1.2% of NCAA senior players get drafted by an NBA team. NFL drafts 1.7% of NCAA senior football players; Baseball holds the best odds, where 8.9% of NCAA baseball players will get drafted by a Major League Baseball club — but that includes minor league farm teams.

There’s a handy chart at the bottom of the post which summarizes the statistics. Now, what does it take to become an all-star trader?

(3) “After 8 Decades, Tiny Toad Resurfaces in Asia” [New York Times] – very cool discovery of the Borneo rainbow toad (click through to see the picture):

The Borneo rainbow toad, with its long spindly legs, looks a bit like an Abstract Expressionist canvas splattered in bright green, purple and red. But when this amphibian was last seen, in 1924, the painter Jackson Pollock was just 12, and the only image of the mysterious creature was a black-and-white sketch.

(4) “First Evidence that Birds Tweet Using Grammar” [New Scientist] – fascinating evidence suggests that birds tweet using proper grammar

First, they played finches unfamiliar songs repeatedly until the birds got used to them and stopped overreacting. Then they jumbled up syllables within each song and replayed these versions to the birds.

“What we found was unexpected…” The birds reacted to only one of the four jumbled versions, called SEQ2, as if they noticed it violated some rule of grammar, whereas the other three remixes didn’t. Almost 90 per cent of the birds tested responded in this way. “This indicates the existence of a specific rule in the sequential orderings of syllables in their songs, shared within the social community.”

(5) “The Strange Tale of Alleged Fraudster Pearlasia Gamboa” [San Francisco Weekly] – probably the most bizarre story I’ve read all week. It’s about the Dominion of Melchizedek, which, according to Wikipedia, is a micronation known for facilitating large scale banking fraud in many parts of the world. The SF Weekly story profiles its president, Pearlasia Gamboa, and her confessions.

The Dominion [of Melchizedek] eventually expanded beyond its underwater seat of government to claim more land: three more tiny Pacific islands and portions of Antarctica. After annexing its polar territory, the Dominion began listing among its senior officials a figure with the surname “Penguini,” a touch that a veteran California fraud investigator describes as “cute.”

What was the point of such a lovingly detailed fiction? The Dominion of Melchizedek, according to government authorities, was intended to act as a sort of mothership for con artists worldwide, issuing fake banking licenses, passports, and other documents to lend a veneer of official authenticity to fraud schemes. “Everything about it is phony,” says John Shockey, former head of the fraud unit for the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency.

A fascinating read.