What is it, with students and, with commas? Part II

I know I write some, variation of this every time I'm, marking papers, but these, little, Shatners, they leave me no choice.  At Unfogged earlier, we were discussing whether the ubiquity of text-based interfaces had a beneficial effect on student writing, and I neglected to mention the blindingly obvious: these fancy new text interfaces not only don't require commas, their limit on the number of characters actively encourages people to write without them.  The result is that students form a mental picture of what a text looks like and it has nary, a comma, in it. 

So when they're asked to write in formal, comma-containing sentences, they don't distribute the commas according to grammatical rules or the natural rhythms of a sentence; instead, they place their commas according to some aesthetic ideal of what an academic paper looks like.  They're little, abstract, painters, who need to dribble a bit more punctuation here, and a bit more, there, in order to complete, their masterpiece.

I'm tempted to mock up that classic comma joke in a way that'll be memorable to them:

Let's eat Shatner!

Let's eat, Shatner!

Commas: they save lives. 

I think I might have to replace "Shatner" with "Priceline Negotiator" if I want them to recognize the reference.

Comments

[medrawt]

I recall being instructed as a kid by well-meaning teachers that you might want to use commas where you'd pause when speaking; my assumption has been that a nation of children ingested this advice and therefore deploys commas whenever they think an asthamtic might pause for breath during the spring pollen onslaught.

re: the other thing, like many Americans I only really learned about grammar (in the formal, I can articulate what I'm talking about and parse sentences on a chalk board) through the study of foreign languages, but I can't imagine learning about writing in an academic fashion. I learned to write by osmosis, and presume the reason why I'm a better writer than people who are worse writers than I am is because the odds are that I've read many, many, many more books than they have, and a great many of those before I was sixteen. Style is another thing, more elusive, but the trick of writing understandable sentences in something like formalized American English strikes me as a test of fluency with the written word.

[Luther Blissett]

There are only, like, six or so rules to comma usage. I cover them in the first three weeks of tenth grade English. It has a clear and positive effect on their writing.

(And sure, sure, I know there aren't hard and fast rules to comma usage. But at least when commas are used consistently, in a rule-based manner, I find fewer grammatical errors. For example, I teach students to use a comma after any opening phrase. It's not always necessary, but it never really hurts: "In the beginning, God made the monkeys" or "After lunch, we headed down to the morgue.")

[Ahistoricality]

presume the reason why I'm a better writer than people who are worse writers than I am is because the odds are that I've read many, many, many more books than they have,

I was told once, by a writing/rhetoric teacher, that the only things that reliably improve writing are doing more writing and doing more reading. Sorry, Scott.

[Lawrence L. White]

My composition classes are at least 50% comma-larnin'. In line w/what Luther said, it's the only way I've found to teach sentence quality.

[CP]

A rhetoric instructor I had once remarked that one of the many weird ways in which William Buckley and Gore Vidal were inextricably linked was that both men had somehow gone through their entire career as public patrician intellectuals without having any real idea how to properly use a comma. You should mention to your students, perhaps, that if they happen to be scions of great family fortunes then the use of commas becomes less important.

Also, I'm pretty sure most kids today still recognize Shatner qua Shatner. Between the kitsch value of Star Trek and the cheese value of Boston Legal, plus his campy cover of Common People that I think still gets play on college radio, he pretty much has his bases covered.

[Paul Renault]

It's too bad that the BBS game Pyroto Mountain isn't around any more. On the Mountain I used to play on, the players would get regularly attacked if their posts were boring, misspelled, or ungrammatical.

Nothing tightens up your prose like the prospect of losing your life.

[SEK]

Medrawt:

through the study of foreign languages, but I can't imagine learning about writing in an academic fashion.

Many of my best writers are ESL for exactly this reason: there's none of that pride to convince them because they know the language, they know how to write in it. Disabusing native-speakers of that notion is one of the most difficult tasks I have.

LB:

There are only, like, six or so rules to comma usage. I cover them in the first three weeks of tenth grade English.

I teach the templates, too, but especially when they start nesting clauses and quoting sources that contain commas themselves, students lose their shit. I think it's as much of a case of over-thinking it, so they hyper-correct by placing a comma anywhere one might be needed. (Or, as Medrawt wrote, they read their work aloud like winded asthmatics.)

Ahistoricality:

I was told once, by a writing/rhetoric teacher, that the only things that reliably improve writing are doing more writing and doing more reading.

Wait, I told you that, didn't I? Even if I didn't, it's true, and it's something I say all the time. (It's also why I have them read so material and write so many blogs: even "informal" writing, when done in a formal, classroom setting has a positive effect on their prose.

Lawrence:

My composition classes are at least 50% comma-larnin'.

My office hours tend to be about 90 percent. I find the sentence-level material easier to handle in a one-on-one setting.

CP:

Buckley, yes, but I don't remember Vidal as being bad with commas. Granted, I haven't read him since a high school fling with historical fiction, but I was more of a prescriptivist then than I am now, and am surprised I didn't notice.

Paul:

What is this "BBS" of which you speak, Paul? Actually, I never played Pyroto Mountain, but a trivia game that eventually gives you magic powers? That sounds like something I could've gotten behind.

[Clarence L'inspecteur]

Anybody remembers Gertrude Stein? In "Lectures In America":

"And now what does a comma do and what has it to do and why do I feel as I do about them.
What does a comma do.
I have refused them so often and left the out so much and did
without them so continually that I have come finally to be indifferent
to them. I do not now care whether you put them in or not but for a
long time I felt very definitely about them and would have nothing to
do with them.
As I say commas are servile and they have no life of their own, and
their use is not a use, it is a way of replacing one’s own interest and I
do decidedly like to like my own interest my own interest in what I am
doing. A comma by helping you along holding your coat for you and
putting on your shoes keeps you from living your life as actively as
you should lead it and to me for many years and I still do feel that way
about it only now I do not pay as much attention to them, the use of
them was positively degrading."

[The Modesto Kid]

I'll see your Stein (beautiful! BTW and thanks) and raise you a Saramago: "Perhaps in the building opposite, behind those closed windows some blind people, men, women, roused by the noise of the constant beating of the rain, with their head pressed against the cold window-panes covering with their breath on the glass the dullness of the night, remember the time when, like now, they last saw rain falling from the sky. ...Only God sees us, said the wife of the first blind man, who, despite disappointments and setbacks, clings to the belief that God is not blind, to which the doctor's wife replied, Not even he, the sky is clouded over."

[P.T. Smith]

presume the reason why I'm a better writer than people who are worse writers than I am is because the odds are that I've read many, many, many more books than they have

I was told once, by a writing/rhetoric teacher, that the only things that reliably improve writing are doing more writing and doing more reading. Sorry, Scott.

Wait, I told you that, didn't I? Even if I didn't, it's true, and it's something I say all the time. (It's also why I have them read so material and write so many blogs: even "informal" writing, when done in a formal, classroom setting has a positive effect on their prose.

I'm totally on board with this. It's pretty much the only way that I learned and actually remembered anything about commas/grammar.

There's one problem with it though, and that is when you are an editor, and someone wants to challenge and edit and they remember their all sorts of terms from classes they took. They start throwing the terms at you and you just want to start crying and yelling "I've read so much more than you! I know I'm right!" Instead, you explain to them how without a comma it means this, and with a comma it means that. Then they throw more terms at you, you admit that they are right, but the second they leave you change the damned comma anyways.

[JK]

Yes, you can always use a good example. Like this:

"Eat shit and die!"--a strongly worded injunction.

Vs

"Eat, shit, and die."--a jejune commentary on the nature of life.

[Ahistoricality]

Wait, I told you that, didn't I? Even if I didn't, it's true, and it's something I say all the time.

This was before I knew you, even virtually.