4 ms·
Not to detract from the message here, but > It may just be a game to you but, it means the world to us The placement of that comma really irks me. Isn't "It m
by tines 5y ago
Not to detract from the message here, but
> It may just be a game to you but, it means the world to us
The placement of that comma really irks me. Isn't "It may just be a game to you, but it means the world to us" the grammatically correct form? I'm somewhat surprised to see this in official communication from the Canadian Red Cross group.
I feel like I've seen this "post-but" comma more and more recently. I guess people feel like they would speak the sentence with a pause after the conjunction and therefore the comma goes there in writing.
- m1117 5y agoThey wanted to put emphasis on the pause?
- nuccy 5y agoIt seems they intended to make a pause after "but". For that purpose "..." instead of the comma, would actually fit better.
- Lammy 5y agoThis looks like a job for—Emdash Man!
- dang 5y agoProbably the most excited I've ever personally made PG was when he saw me make an em dash on my MBP and immediately wanted to know how.
- dwaltrip 5y agoI would also like to know how!
- Lammy 5y agoCompose Key followed by three dashes (two and a period for an en-dash) https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/en_US.UTF-8.html https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/e... Also on Windows using WinCompose http://wincompose.info/ http://wincompose.info/
- junar 5y agoWell, parent comment mentioned Mac, so the correct answer is Option, Shift, and - (hyphen). There are many other characters that Macs can type with the Option key.
- dwaltrip 5y agoThanks! That is great.
- chomp 5y agoCorrect it does go before the conjunction, and an optional one after if you want to draw a pause.
- SamBam 5y agoNo, no optional one after. A comma shouldn't ever be used to "draw a pause" in English. It needs to break up logical fragments of a sentence. If you want to indicate a pause to show how you want it read you can use an ellipses (...).
- ykat7 5y ago> Isn't "It may just be a game to you, but it means the world to us" the grammatically correct form? Yep, that's what I would go with. I can't see a use case for a comma after the "but" in British nor American English. > I guess people feel like they would speak the sentence with a pause after the conjunction Even this feels off to me when I read up to the "but" and then pause (as opposed to pausing on the "you").
- wizzwizz4 5y agoIt's correct in German, which otherwise has basically the same grammar as English.
- tines 5y agoThat's interesting. Is the pause there in spoken German as well?
- dgb23 5y agoGenerally no.
- eldaisfish 5y ago>which otherwise has basically the same grammar as English German and English have similar grammar but they are very far from being the same. Particular here with commas. Clauses in German are almost always marked with commas. English uses the comma much more sparingly.
- schoen 5y agoYes, it's always odd to me to see native German speakers putting a comma before "that" in indirect discourse in English (like "ich glaube, dass dieser Satz richtig ist" -> *"I believe, that this sentence is correct"). In English there's also a difference in comma usage with restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses (restrictive relative clauses, which indicate which specific entity is referred to as opposed to others, don't use commas, while nonrestrictive relative clauses, which merely add additional information, do), but I seem to remember that native German speakers will commonly write both with commas. *The person, who was here yesterday, has come back. Conversely, it's sometimes hard for me to remember to use that comma in German. I want to write something like *"sie sagt dass man hier kein Komma braucht".
- wizzwizz4 5y agoOh, yeah, this is what I was thinking of. The comma is the same side of aber as in English.
- jihadjihad 5y agoOT but it reminds me of that part in Borat where he's learning about not-jokes, and he says "This suit is black not," without any pause. Similarly odd sort of rhythm to the first part of the sentence before the comma.
- agbell 5y agoIt does seem strange. If they wanted that emphasis they could have used a quote. > "It may just be a game to you but" Red Cross spokesperson tine said "it means the world to us."
- dmje 5y agoCame here to say this. Couldn't really see past it, which says more about me than anything else.
- bregma 5y agoFor consistency it should also be "it mean's the world to us". Grind all my gears at once.
- dang 5y agoOh my goodness. I didn't even see that, probably because my brain regards it as impossible - it's the punctuation equivalent of the gorilla walking across the basketball court. Extreme comma tension now relieved above.
- acheron 5y agoHa, the same thing happened to me until I saw the comment. The gorilla analogy is just right.