A Comic Directed at Curmudgeons

Okay, I get the message. Good thing it doesn’t apply to me—I never correct anyone’s grammar unasked, except in this blog.

Of course, you’re welcome to ask…

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I suppose you could say that English became a lot more cosmopolitan in 1066 when the Normans invaded and infused French into the language. From them we got “pork” and “beef” on the dinner table and “pig” and “cow” in the barnyard. But English, over time, has become almost a pidgin language from all the loan words it has acquired. Hence the humor of this Making It:

He’s making fun of people who have a provincial attitude and don’t give newcomers enough time to learn the language.

It’s a good point, though:

If you go to visit a place where the people speak something other than English, make an effort to learn that language!

Not sure that manager should be smoking in the workplace, either…

Commas are useful punctuation marks. They serve to separate, and they show a weaker separation than semicolons, which are weaker than periods. We’re familiar with commas separating the parts of compound sentences and the parts of lists. Commas are used for another kind of separation, and I’m not sure what to call it. Here’s part of a sentence:

 “If we do end up finding something that’s good,

I’ll stop there for a moment. What’s good here? It looks like something is good, right? But when you see the rest of the sentence, you discover that it’s the finding that’s good!

 “If we do end up finding something that’s good, but even if we don’t find anything, that works as well,” says Marco Bortoletto, one of the archaeologists on the team.

We should have a comma after “something” so we can tell that what’s good isn’t the something. That’s the separation I’m writing about. Beyond representing a pause in spoken language, I’m not sure what to call it. Sorry.

So here’s how the sentence should be written:

 “If we do end up finding something, that’s good; but even if we don’t find anything, that works as well,” says Marco Bortoletto, one of the archaeologists on the team.

Notice that I changed the comma after “but” to a semicolon. It’s a good idea to use a semicolon to separate the parts of a compound sentence if the parts have their own commas. But that’s another lesson.

(It’s number 279 on his website. I couldn’t find the date.)

It’s the LOVE of money that’s the root of all evil. (I Tim. 6:10) Harrumpf.

PS—My dad used to quote that verse, and add “and a man needs roots!”

English has a tendency to change hyphenated compounds into single compound words over time. For example, “today” used to be “to-day,” and “pickup truck” used to be “pick-up truck.” This process takes a generation or so to happen. As people become more and more familiar with a phrase, they tend to leave out the hyphen. (We call this sort of thing linguistic change. Linguistic change is a common source of grumbling among grammar curmudgeons.)

Today I read an article by a reporter who covers politics. He used a compound word that I would have hyphenated. IMO the spelling is on the early side:

The decadesold informal understanding between the government and the press — that the government would only go through the motions on leak investigations — was dead.

I’m not saying he’s wrong, just early. We don’t use “decades-old” very often.

You saw it here first second!

PS—I ran into another premature compound (for the moment, we’ll ignore the false subject and “upon” where they should use “on.”):

There is a critical need to establish organizationwide data security policies and controls based upon DSG.