The Persistence of Unease at the Idea of Knowledge Acquisition...

[attack_laurel]

I am way too much of a grammar and spelling mole; I have to work mightily to not correct people on the intarwebs when they use incorrect homonyms, use semi-colons willy-nilly, or phonetically spell a wurd.  But I don't, because that's rude, and being rude is a far worse sin than typing "congradulations!".

This, however, makes my heart sing and my

Comments

You've seen Bob the Angry Flower, right?

[strawberrykaren]

If not, he has his own charming thoughts on apostrophes and the use of "its" and "it's."

[fiadnata]

If you enjoy history as stories and gossip, you'd probably love one book I discovered quite a few years ago, now. See if you can find The Broadview Book of Medieval Anecdotes compiled by Richard Kay (1988, Lewiston, NY, Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press) -- plenty of amusing stories, including some that made me say, "That king was suffering from heat exhaustion!" (Yeah, I spend too time with chirurgeons, even though I am not one.)

You will probably need to get it via interlibrary loan, though it is in plenty of university libraries. Tell your local librarian that the OCLC number is 19741294 -- knowing that will make their job that much easier. There are also copies for sale via Barnes & Noble online, if you decide you have to own it. (I did -- *way* too much fun.)

[brickhousewench]

OMG, I love the two dinosaurs in love. *glee*

history isn't dates and timelines, it's stories, gossip, and the stuff your persona cares about....Everyday life is a series of stories and vignettes; something that straight history classes fail to express to their students.

Testify! I don't think I took a single history class in high school or college, yet my personal library is chock full of history books. One of the reasons why I fell in love with Tudor England is that it's better than any soap opera for complicated plots and intrigue.

[mistressrhi]

I just love you.

[quatrefoil]

The grammar site is delightful but I disagree with the comma before 'but' in the sentence about the writer's aunt's hairy knuckles. I'm not a fan of the 'Oxford comma' before 'and' in a simple list either - it adds no meaning and can obfuscate. I teach this by asking students to identify the difference in meaning between the following sentences (actually found in the first and second editions of the same book):

'The author lives with her husband, an Anglican vicar and her two children.'

and

'The author lives with her husband, an Anglican vicar, and her two children.'

If the Oxford comma is used, there is no difference in meaning between the two sentences; in a more rational method of punctuation the former denotes an interesting menage-a-trois, with a question as to whether the children belong to the vicar or the author.

You may also enjoy a book by M. B. Parkes called 'Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West' which is an excellent history of the subject.

[aeliakirith]

But on the other hand:

This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

and

This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

In that case, leaving the Oxford comma out makes the end of the series read like an appositive. (I know, an apocryphal example rather than a real one, but it illustrates the point.)

Personally, I like the Oxford comma. With either rule, you will occasionally end up with constructions that can be misinterpreted--an appositive that looks like a series or a series that looks like a noun and its appositive.

[quatrefoil]

I concede that another comma would clear up your sentence, but personally, I would have re-ordered it to make it clear. And, as George Orwell would say, sometimes you can break the rules. But I don't think that the odd exception is sufficient justification for a lot of meaningless commas.

OTOH, there are actually two sorts of punctuation system - syntactic and rhetoric - and the problem is that we tend to use both. The Oxford comma belongs to the latter.