Re: Tony Cooper's downhill slide

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:56:13 GMT, Bob Cunningham
<exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I choose to continue to think that Cooper simply didn't
>recognize that the commas made the remark parenthetical, but
>zeroed in on the undesirable interruption the first comma
>seemed to produce and leaped to his keyboard without trying
>to understand what the purpose of the comma was and probably
>without noticing that there was a second comma, the one
>after "Fall".
>
>Anyway, note that Cooper's arguments are obviously baloney,
>since he didn't complain about both commas, or about the
>remark being punctuated as parenthetical. He complained
>only about the first comma. He even repeated above his
>complaint about the first comma only, saying

Bob, I'm sorely disappointed in you. I know you didn't have time to
run this through a Perl thingy, but even a quick visual count would
show there are three commas in the sentence (before the colon).

"Much as Golding speculated, in _Free Fall_, about Samuel Mountjoy's
fall into depravity, a similar question must be asked about our own
Coop: just where, in his life, did he go wrong?"

The second and third do make "about Samuel Mountjoy's fall into
depravity" a parenthetical phrase. The first comma, though, makes a
parenthetical phrase out of something that need not - even should not
- be a parenthetical phrase. There's need for only one parenthetical
phrase in that part of the sentence. There is, of course, another
parenthetical phrase after the colon.

I would not complain about the second comma because it is required if
the third is used. I'm perfectly happy with the second and third.

> A comma after "speculated" creates a distracting break
> in the sentence. There's no need for it, and it breaks
> no rule to omit it.
>
>Note that if Charles had accepted Cooper's tutelage and
>deleted only the first comma, the result would have been
>
> Much as Golding speculated in _Free Fall_, about
> Samuel Mountjoy's fall into depravity,
>
>that makes "about Samuel Mountjoy's fall into depravity"
>parenthetical. I doubt that even Cooper would think that
>would make much sense.

But it does make sense. That phrase is quite parenthetical and could
be left out without changing the meaning of the sentence. Charles is
just giving us additional information when he tells us about the
details of the theme of the book. We really need only to know that
Mountjoy questioned where he went wrong or that Golding questioned
where Mountjoy went wrong. It's unclear from the sentence if the
character asked the question in the character's voice, or if the
author asked the question.


>Anyway, it does indeed break a rule to omit the first comma.
>Since Charles decided he wanted to make the remark
>parenthetical, it would have broken a rule if he had failed
>to punctuate it properly.
>
Ahh, but we don't allow that in aue. We are not permitted to make up
a rule of punctuation and then claim we are adhering to a rule.
Proponents of the School of Pause are hissed and booed for trying
this. Just try and tell Skitt that my rule has any grammatical
standing. I haven't noticed you coming to my defense on this.

I am also sorely disappointed with you on the grounds that your
premise is uncharacteristically weak. To hang your argument on the
peg that Charles can decide to include commas willy-nilly because it
suits him is just not your usual style. Only ray o'hara can get away
with that.


--

Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
.

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