Category Archives: Literary

an honest-to-goodness police detective

1 Comment

In doing research (last minute research for a book that’s coming out this year, research for two books in the pipeline, and prep work research for a new novel that I’ll be starting soon), I’ve made some interesting contacts, including an official from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and a former TPA operations officer.

The most interesting contact thus far has been Detective Jim Weiss of the Philadelphia Police Department. I used to know to know Jim when he was in high school. His band, Ubisunt, was on my independent record label, Triquetra Records. (Their CD will blow your hair back! Their live show was literally insane.)

Jim has been so generous with his time and knowledge. He has given me so much information, that it took days to study. I joked with him that I felt like I saw studying for the detective’s exam. Reading Jim’s responses and opinions, as well as actual police directives, has reinforced my opinion that from the best of us comes those who choose to become policemen/policewomen and firefighters.

Thank you, Jim!

Comma Comma Comma Chameleon

Leave a comment

This a Ben Yagoda article from the New York Times two years ago or so, but I just discovered it and enjoyed it…he wrote a very entertaining and illuminating book on writing, How Not to Write Bad, that my mom
bought me…

From the New York Times:

The Most Comma Mistakes
By BEN YAGODA MAY 21, 2012

As I noted in my earlier article, rules and conventions about when to use and not to use commas are legion. But certain errors keep popping up. Here are a few of them.
Identification Crisis
If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a thousand times. I’m referring to a student’s writing a sentence like:

I went to see the movie, “Midnight in Paris” with my friend, Jessie.

Comma after “movie,” comma after “friend” and, sometimes, comma after “Paris” as well. None are correct — unless “Midnight in Paris” is the only movie in the world and Jessie is the writer’s only friend. Otherwise, the punctuation should be:

I went to see the movie “Midnight in Paris” with my friend Jessie.

If that seems wrong or weird or anything short of clearly right, bear with me a minute and take a look at another correct sentence:

I went to see Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Midnight in Paris,” with my oldest friend, Jessie.

You need a comma after “movie” because this and only this is Mr. Allen’s newest movie in theaters, and before “Jessie” because she and only she is the writer’s oldest friend.

The syntactical situation I’m talking about is identifier-name. The basic idea is that if the name (in the above example, “Jessie”) is the only thing in the world described by the identifier (“my oldest friend”), use a comma before the name (and after it as well, unless you’ve come to the end of the sentence). If not, don’t use any commas.

Grammatically, there are various ways of describing what’s going on. One helpful set of terms is essential vs. nonessential. When the identifier makes sense in the sentence by itself, then the name is nonessential and you use a comma before it. Otherwise, no comma. That explains an exception to the only-thing-in-the-world rule: when the words “a,” “an” or “some,” or a number, come before the description or identification of a name, use a comma.

A Bronx plumber, Stanley Ianella, bought the winning lottery ticket.

When an identifier describes a unique person or thing and is preceded by “the” or a possessive, use a comma:

Baseball’s home run leader, Barry Bonds, will be eligible for the Hall of Fame next year.

My son, John, is awesome. (If you have just one son.)

But withhold the comma if not unique:

My son John is awesome. (If you have more than one son.)

The artist David Hockney is a master of color.

The celebrated British artist David Hockney is a master of color.

And even

The gay, bespectacled, celebrated British artist David Hockney is a master of color.

(Why are there commas after “gay” and “bespectacled” but not “celebrated”? Because “celebrated” and “British” are different sorts of adjectives. The sentence would not work if “and” were placed between them, or if their order were reversed.)

If nothing comes before the identification, don’t use a comma:

The defense team was led by the attorney Harold Cullen.

No one seems to have a problem with the idea that if the identification comes after the name, it should always be surrounded by commas:

Steve Meyerson, a local merchant, gave the keynote address.

However, my students, at least, often wrongly omit a “the” or an “a” in sentences of this type:

Jill Meyers, sophomore, is president of the sorority.

To keep the commas, it needs to be:

Jill Meyers, a sophomore, is president of the sorority.

The Case of the Missing Comma
A related issue is the epidemic of missing commas after parenthetical phrases or appositives — that is, self-enclosed material that’s within a sentence, but not essential to its meaning. The following sentences all lack a necessary comma. Can you spot where?

My father, who gave new meaning to the expression “hard working” never took a vacation.

He was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1964.

Philip Roth, author of “Portnoy’s Complaint” and many other books is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize.

If you said “working,” “Iowa” and “books,” give yourself full marks. I’m not sure why this particular mistake is so tempting. It may sometimes be because these phrases are so long that by the time we get to the end of them, we’ve forgotten about the first comma. In any case, a strategy to prevent it is to remember the acronym I.C.E. Whenever you find yourself using a comma before an Identification, Characterization or Explanation, remember that there has to be a comma after the I.C.E. as well.

Splice Girls, and Boys
“Comma splice” is a term used for the linking of two independent clauses — that is, grammatical units that contain a subject and a verb and could stand alone as sentences — with a comma. When I started teaching at the University of Delaware some years ago, I was positively gobsmacked by the multitude of comma splices that confronted me. They have not abated.

Here’s an example:

He used to be a moderate, now he’s a card-carrying Tea Partier.

It’s easy to fix in any number of ways:

He used to be a moderate. Now he’s a card-carrying Tea Partier.

He used to be a moderate; now he’s a card-carrying Tea Partier.

He used to be a moderate, but now he’s a card-carrying Tea Partier.

He used to be a moderate — now he’s a card-carrying Tea Partier.

How to choose among them? By reading aloud — always the best single piece of writing advice — and choosing the version that best suits the context, your style and your ear. I would go with the semicolon. How about you?

Two particular situations seem to bring out a lot of comma splices. The first is in quotations:

“The way they’ve been playing, the team will be lucky to survive the first round,” the coach said, “I’m just hoping someone gets a hot hand.”

The comma after “said” has to be replaced with a period.

The other issue is the word “however,” which more and more people seem to want to use as a conjunction, comparable to “but” or “yet.” So they will write something like:

The weather is great today, however it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.

That may be acceptable someday. Today, however, it’s a comma splice. Correct punctuation could be:

The weather is great today, but it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.

Or

The weather is great today. However, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow.

Comma splices can be O.K. when you’re dealing with short clauses where even a semicolon would slow things down too much:

I talked to John, John talked to Lisa.

Samuel Beckett was the poet laureate of the comma splice. He closed his novel “The Unnamable” with a long sentence that ends:

… perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Which goes to show, I suppose, that rules are made to be broken.

Ben Yagoda

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, the example involving “Midnight in Paris” mistakenly said a comma was needed after the name “Jessie,” rather than before it.

Ben Yagoda is a professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of, among other books, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made and The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing. He blogs for the Chronicle of Higher Education and his own blog, Not One-Off Britishisms.
comma2-blog427

A Reading and Signing…

Leave a comment

COMING UP SOON!
The Sweater Girl Book Tour rolls on!

I will be giving a READING from my latest book, Sweater Girl and Other Tales of Mondauk County, at Mt. Airy Read & Eat Bookstore, followed by a BOOK SIGNING, on Thursday, December 11, 7-8pm.

All four of my books will be available.

Mt. Airy Read & Eat Bookstore, 7141 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, PA
(5 minutes from Chest Hill, 15 minutes from southern Montgomery County)
267-997-2739

mt airy

The Doylestown Bookshop Signing

1 Comment

The signing at the Doylestown Bookshop on September 27th. was great fun.

The Sweater Girl Book Tour rolls on! Come get your book signed at the Ambler Main Street Oktoberfest in Ambler, PA on Butler Street. Click the link for more information!

Here are a couple of photos from the Doylestown signing.

My sister, Kathie, played the role of my personal assistant. She’s awesome, and I am very grateful! Kathie also made the insanely great chocolate chip cookies you see on the table, surrounded by my 4 books. Special thank you to Krisy Paredes, the shop’s publicist, who put this awesome event together. Thank you also to my friend and copy editor, Beth Meier, who stopped by and hung out with us for a while. And much gratitude to everyone who came out to support local authors!
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA