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> (To the best of my knowledge, I'm no music theorist) I know this is considered off-topic, but I’ve refrained a thousand times and now I can’t help it… Pleas

> (To the best of my knowledge, I'm no music theorist) I know this is considered off-topic, but I’ve refrained a thousand times and now I can’t help it… Please stop abusing commas! This sentence deserves a semicolon or a dash or a hyphen or a couple of full stops/periods or… anything else! With a comma it’s actually harder to read and is semantically indistinguishable from the sentence ‘I’m no music theorist, to the best of my knowledge’, which is obviously not what is meant. </unpopular rant>

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> or a dash or a hyphen Em-dashes are typically used for separating clauses. Hyphens and en-dashes are used for hyphenating terms and indicating ranges (among a couple of other uses). Not that this really matters in practice, but the visual cue is useful for reading rapidly and accurately
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  Thank you — I know. I think the usage varies (traditionally, anyway) between British and American English anyway. My point was that anything other than a comma would be preferable.
dahart 2y ago
Hey I’m guilty of going on unpopular nit-picky language rants, but I’ve learned something over the years after doing more historical language research: there are almost no rants about language abuse that are correct, they are almost always incorrect. And this one is incorrect, I’m sorry to say. The first mistake is assuming a comma has a well defined right and wrong usage. It doesn’t. Your favorite pet use of comma is not the only use of a comma. There are lots of valid uses of comma that have overlap with other punctuation marks, and with lack of punctuation marks too. Language is extremely fluid and is defined by usage and changing over time. It is not defined by style guides or dictionaries or what we think we learned in school. Personally I think it has become far more fun to be a language pedant once I’ve embraced that fact that there’s rarely ever such thing as wrong usage, and started to look for the interesting uses in the past and the in present to think about how things have changed before and how they might change in the future. Other examples of incorrect rants include how to use the semicolon (lots of ways), whether to use two spaces or one between sentences (either, who cares), whether using literally figuratively is wrong (it’s not), whether using the word really as an emphatic rhetorical question is acceptable (it is), whether the word myriad can be followed by the word of (it can), etc., etc., etc.. Come join the side of enjoying how weird language is and how many different flavors it comes in, and how as long as someone gets their point across, nothing else matters, though some people make really beautiful language and also communicate well while breaking all the “rules”.
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  Your whole comment boils down to ‘you should never be allowed to comment on another’s’ language use’. Which is particularly nonsensical, as you also explain how commas have other ‘valid uses’. I thought there were no rules at all! …or are there only rules sanctioned by you? > as long as someone gets their point across, nothing else matters This is just classic. It’s the standard boilerplate response to any criticism of bad grammar (which this is, I’m afraid). I’m not foolish enough to believe that there are God-given rules for language, but when the non-conformity adds nothing and simply makes the text more difficult to read it’s worth pointing out. I mean, seriously, why is a comma better than any of the alternatives here? It isn’t.
  - dahart 2y ago
    I’m sorry I made you feel defensive. (Though maybe take a moment to consider how the author feels in response to your comments...) I’m not at all saying you can’t comment on language. It is possible to break language rules, this just isn’t one of those cases. I’m saying if you’re going to criticize someone for their language on the basis of perceived language rules, you should either be certain you’re correct about your complaint, or be prepared to receive counter-criticism. In this case, your top comment is factually incorrect, the usage of the comma was not wrong above, according to the rules and usage of commas. > why is a comma better than any of the alternative here? It isn’t. Your complaint boils down to the writing has other alternative choices that you would prefer. That’s fine. It’s pure opinion, but you are entitled to your opinion. I’m not arguing the sentence in question is the best way to write it, I’m pushing back on your incorrect claim that it’s wrong. It wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t non-conforming, the usage of comma in the article matches what sources say about comma. Maybe before criticizing or arguing further, take a moment to review what a few sources say about the comma and it’s legitimate uses. [1] For the comma to be wrong, it must break all of the acceptable uses, not just any of them. IMO it’s also worth reading about why language prescriptivism itself is considered bad by many people. [2] Reasons include prescritivism being overly dogmatic, classist, racist, regional preference, and doesn’t adapt with changing language. It’s fair for you to say it could be better written. It’s not fair to try to justify your opinion by claiming valid language use is breaking language rules. And my actual point was the part about leaning into descriptivism and away from language policing other people. I have done both, and I’m just saying you’ll probably be happier — I am — if you realize that following prescribed language rules aren’t what makes writing good or bad, and that legitimate usage is broader than you imagine. It’s also helpful when discussing language clarity to take the viewpoint that some of the burden of successful communication is on the receiver, and that when the reader or listener has an open mind and assumes there are multiple interpretations, it becomes easier to choose a good faith interpretation that makes the most sense in context. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription#Critic...
thezipcreator 2y ago
what? it's perfectly readable to me, I just read any comma as a short pause. When saying that out loud, you would make a short pause. It's read the same whether there's an ellipsis, semicolon, hyphen, or whatever. Also, no, it isn't semantically indistinguishable from that latter sentence, what? You literally know this, you said that that's "obviously not what is meant". The order of the sentences, and the pause there, is what conveys semantic information, not whether that pause is a comma or not.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  Yes, there are age-old debates between descriptive and prescriptive grammarians. But in my book, “pause = comma” is a crude and inaccurate tool, and “the commas didn’t stop you from figuring out what I meant” is the lowest possible bar.
  - dahart 2y ago
    There are active prescriptive English grammarians? How many, relative to descriptivists? Serious question, I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’m biased, but I thought the framing that English language rules are de-facto historically descriptive and not prescriptive was by far the dominant view among language experts. If there are prescriptivists, they seem to be losing, since English has changed a lot. When I try to dig into any language question, whether it’s punctuation history or word etymology or whatever, the answers by professional linguists always seem to be along the lines of, ‘well some people have opinions, but there’s a wide variety of usage throughout history, c’est la vie’. I don’t know what you mean about a low bar. Is that a bad thing? What do you want to have happen, either here or with commas in general? Merriam Webster like descriptivism: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-defining-lexicography https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-presc...
    - shermantanktop 2y ago
      I’m not a prescriptivist either. Language usage changes over time, and that’s fine. And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. The more interesting (to me) question is whether spoken English and written English share the same conventions. I think it’s abundantly clear that in most languages, they are divergent, to the point that some spoken languages have multiple written forms, each with their own ruleset for handling topics like formality or gender. So to me, saying “gonna” all day long doesn’t automatically transfer to writing, where most people write “going to.” Same with commas—the written conventions are not, as far as I’m concerned, about mimicking speech pauses. If that rule works for you, great. It doesn’t for me, and I fall back to patterns that are drawn from reading the written word. For low bar, I didn’t mean to sound like I was taking a dig. What I meant was that a written sentence which isn’t comprehensible isn’t functional. Once you get past functional, there’s a world of expression and nuance that come from different writing styles.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

> or a dash or a hyphen Em-dashes are typically used for separating clauses. Hyphens and en-dashes are used for hyphenating terms and indicating ranges (among a couple of other uses). Not that this really matters in practice, but the visual cue is useful for reading rapidly and accurately

xanderlewis 2y ago
Thank you — I know. I think the usage varies (traditionally, anyway) between British and American English anyway. My point was that anything other than a comma would be preferable.

dahart 2y ago

Hey I’m guilty of going on unpopular nit-picky language rants, but I’ve learned something over the years after doing more historical language research: there are almost no rants about language abuse that are correct, they are almost always incorrect. And this one is incorrect, I’m sorry to say. The first mistake is assuming a comma has a well defined right and wrong usage. It doesn’t. Your favorite pet use of comma is not the only use of a comma. There are lots of valid uses of comma that have overlap with other punctuation marks, and with lack of punctuation marks too. Language is extremely fluid and is defined by usage and changing over time. It is not defined by style guides or dictionaries or what we think we learned in school. Personally I think it has become far more fun to be a language pedant once I’ve embraced that fact that there’s rarely ever such thing as wrong usage, and started to look for the interesting uses in the past and the in present to think about how things have changed before and how they might change in the future. Other examples of incorrect rants include how to use the semicolon (lots of ways), whether to use two spaces or one between sentences (either, who cares), whether using literally figuratively is wrong (it’s not), whether using the word really as an emphatic rhetorical question is acceptable (it is), whether the word myriad can be followed by the word of (it can), etc., etc., etc.. Come join the side of enjoying how weird language is and how many different flavors it comes in, and how as long as someone gets their point across, nothing else matters, though some people make really beautiful language and also communicate well while breaking all the “rules”.

xanderlewis 2y ago
Your whole comment boils down to ‘you should never be allowed to comment on another’s’ language use’. Which is particularly nonsensical, as you also explain how commas have other ‘valid uses’. I thought there were no rules at all! …or are there only rules sanctioned by you? > as long as someone gets their point across, nothing else matters This is just classic. It’s the standard boilerplate response to any criticism of bad grammar (which this is, I’m afraid). I’m not foolish enough to believe that there are God-given rules for language, but when the non-conformity adds nothing and simply makes the text more difficult to read it’s worth pointing out. I mean, seriously, why is a comma better than any of the alternatives here? It isn’t.
- dahart 2y ago
  I’m sorry I made you feel defensive. (Though maybe take a moment to consider how the author feels in response to your comments...) I’m not at all saying you can’t comment on language. It is possible to break language rules, this just isn’t one of those cases. I’m saying if you’re going to criticize someone for their language on the basis of perceived language rules, you should either be certain you’re correct about your complaint, or be prepared to receive counter-criticism. In this case, your top comment is factually incorrect, the usage of the comma was not wrong above, according to the rules and usage of commas. > why is a comma better than any of the alternative here? It isn’t. Your complaint boils down to the writing has other alternative choices that you would prefer. That’s fine. It’s pure opinion, but you are entitled to your opinion. I’m not arguing the sentence in question is the best way to write it, I’m pushing back on your incorrect claim that it’s wrong. It wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t non-conforming, the usage of comma in the article matches what sources say about comma. Maybe before criticizing or arguing further, take a moment to review what a few sources say about the comma and it’s legitimate uses. [1] For the comma to be wrong, it must break all of the acceptable uses, not just any of them. IMO it’s also worth reading about why language prescriptivism itself is considered bad by many people. [2] Reasons include prescritivism being overly dogmatic, classist, racist, regional preference, and doesn’t adapt with changing language. It’s fair for you to say it could be better written. It’s not fair to try to justify your opinion by claiming valid language use is breaking language rules. And my actual point was the part about leaning into descriptivism and away from language policing other people. I have done both, and I’m just saying you’ll probably be happier — I am — if you realize that following prescribed language rules aren’t what makes writing good or bad, and that legitimate usage is broader than you imagine. It’s also helpful when discussing language clarity to take the viewpoint that some of the burden of successful communication is on the receiver, and that when the reader or listener has an open mind and assumes there are multiple interpretations, it becomes easier to choose a good faith interpretation that makes the most sense in context. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription#Critic...

thezipcreator 2y ago

what? it's perfectly readable to me, I just read any comma as a short pause. When saying that out loud, you would make a short pause. It's read the same whether there's an ellipsis, semicolon, hyphen, or whatever. Also, no, it isn't semantically indistinguishable from that latter sentence, what? You literally know this, you said that that's "obviously not what is meant". The order of the sentences, and the pause there, is what conveys semantic information, not whether that pause is a comma or not.

shermantanktop 2y ago
Yes, there are age-old debates between descriptive and prescriptive grammarians. But in my book, “pause = comma” is a crude and inaccurate tool, and “the commas didn’t stop you from figuring out what I meant” is the lowest possible bar.
- dahart 2y ago
  There are active prescriptive English grammarians? How many, relative to descriptivists? Serious question, I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’m biased, but I thought the framing that English language rules are de-facto historically descriptive and not prescriptive was by far the dominant view among language experts. If there are prescriptivists, they seem to be losing, since English has changed a lot. When I try to dig into any language question, whether it’s punctuation history or word etymology or whatever, the answers by professional linguists always seem to be along the lines of, ‘well some people have opinions, but there’s a wide variety of usage throughout history, c’est la vie’. I don’t know what you mean about a low bar. Is that a bad thing? What do you want to have happen, either here or with commas in general? Merriam Webster like descriptivism: https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-defining-lexicography https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/descriptive-vs-presc...
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    I’m not a prescriptivist either. Language usage changes over time, and that’s fine. And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. The more interesting (to me) question is whether spoken English and written English share the same conventions. I think it’s abundantly clear that in most languages, they are divergent, to the point that some spoken languages have multiple written forms, each with their own ruleset for handling topics like formality or gender. So to me, saying “gonna” all day long doesn’t automatically transfer to writing, where most people write “going to.” Same with commas—the written conventions are not, as far as I’m concerned, about mimicking speech pauses. If that rule works for you, great. It doesn’t for me, and I fall back to patterns that are drawn from reading the written word. For low bar, I didn’t mean to sound like I was taking a dig. What I meant was that a written sentence which isn’t comprehensible isn’t functional. Once you get past functional, there’s a world of expression and nuance that come from different writing styles.