Written language or, more specifically, its rules, is a matter of history and culture. All languages began as oral only. At some
point, sooner or later, scholars transposed the words into pronunciation
symbols (e.g., Western languages) or pictograms (e.g., Chinese). The timing and
manner vary from country to country and language to language. This transposition
of the spoken language includes the natural sound stops that serve to render
oral speech clear in meaning and easy to understand. In written language, the pauses
primarily take the form of periods and commas. Most interestingly, in English, end
stop (.) usage rules have remained rather rigid while the use of the comma is rather intuitive and thus subject to disagreement and often raise the wrath of automated
grammar checkers. Thus, I often ignore their mistake warnings and apply common
sense instead of rules.
English, similar to its Germanic stepfather, has rather
strict rules for the use of end stops. Specifically, the period marks the end of a
sentence and a whole number sequence. See: I paid $20,000.75 in taxes last
year. Some abbreviations require periods, notably Latin terms (e.g.) and
initial letters of a name (H. G. Wells). There is a slight difference in
British vs American usage in regard to the requirement for a period after
titles and certain abbreviations, e.g., Mr, Mrs and Ltd in
the UK are Mr. Mrs. and Ltd., in the United States, respectively. The vast
majority of both native and non-native writers of English have no problem
applying these rules.
However, the comma is a completely different story and
involves interpretation as much as rules. To clarify, the comma represents the
spoken pause taken to make a sentence easier to understand or indicate that a
given part is less important. Thus, the spoken sentence “as I was telling
you [pause] my cousin [pause] the one that just got engaged [pause] is coming
to visit” becomes "As I was telling you, my cousin, the one that got
engaged, is coming to visit". An infamous example of a comma-dependent text
is "Crocodiles don’t swim here" as compared to "Crocodiles, don’t swim
here" or its equally amusing family version of Let’s eat grandmother.
The pauses and, therefore, the commas are required to ensure easy compression
and create a certain hierarchy of ideas, i.e., distinguish the main idea from
the additional information.
However, clarity is a case-specific criterion. Take,
for example, the debate over the Oxford comma, the comma placed before the word
“and” in lists. In most cases, its presence or absence has no effect on meaning
or ease of understanding. Compare I need to buy bread, oil and tomatoes
with I need to buy bread, oil, and tomatoes. However, in some cases, the
extra comma does change the meaning. Compare "I love my parents, Batman and
Robin" with "I love my parents, Batman, and Robin". It is possible to
interpret the first sentence to mean that the parents are named Batman and Robin. In
other words, in the vast majority of cases, English neither requires nor
forbids a comma before the word and.
Ease of reading is also subjective. When the writer
changes the order of supporting phrases or clauses, commas sometimes become
necessary but personal choice can enter. For example, I would help if I had
the time means the same as If I had the time, I would help. Apparently,
in the second sentence, it is accepted practice to help the reader understand the
location switch by placing a comma after the dependent clause. Likewise,
dependent phrases at the beginning of a sentence are set off by commas. See:
Some weeks ago, I noticed a change. Clearly, the comma helps the reader
grasp the sentence more easily. By contrast, does this issue exist in comparing
On Sundays, I go to church and On Sundays I go to church? The
rule imposes a comma but I have no issue with the unpaused second version
As for hierarchy, the issue appears on complex
sentences. The two sentence elements are of equal importance but some rules
insist on a comma between them even when clarity or ease of reading is not
involved. Consider: I wanted to go to the dance but nobody invited me. In
my view, both elements are vital for the meaning of the sentence and should not
be separated by a comma. That is true even for longer sentences: The company
has decided to issue a dividend to the stockholders as its profits were much
higher than expected. I see no issue with clarity or reading ease if the writer omits to put a comma after the word "stockholder".
These examples illustrate my complaint with automated
language checkers. They apply formal language rules and warn me of my “errors”.
I personally use Grammarly to QA my writing but reject most of its punctuation suggestions
as irrelevant or even incorrect. I happen to have the knowledge to
intelligently decide to accept or reject. However, many of the users of these
programs are non-native writers and trust these tools blindly. You could say
that users should apply careful judgment when using all automated tools, including AI. However,
we all know that the gap between should and do is even farther
than the gap between spoken and written language.
It is well known that most parents are far more flexible,
i.e., lenient, with the second child than they were for their first child. Similar, the use of end stops in English writing is rather clear while the
use of commas is a bit inconsistent and case-sensitive as least as far as I can
see. You are allowed to disagree with machine-based language checkers. Common sense should rule punctuation also.
No comments:
Post a Comment