GrammarBlog

Monday, 19 November 2007

You have no soul

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Found on my current favourite blog, Passive Aggressive Notes, this example of a comma splice altering the meaning of a sentence is a lesson to all who use commas like confetti.

Thanks to those who used this as a trash can, you have no soul.

This is worse than your average splice as the comma unintentionally turns the phrase, 'you have no soul' into a subordinating clause. In other words – because of the people who use the bin for rubbish, the reader of the sign has no soul. I like to imagine a particularly forlorn student (possibly listening to My Chemical Romance or the Smiths) wandering past this notice and thinking, "So that's it; I knew someone was to blame."

Brilliantly, a passing zealot spotted this error and resolved it with an act of grammar vigilantism.

Labels: comma, comma splice, funny, passive-aggressive notes, punctuation

posted by Gez at 12:28 pm 7 Comments

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Friday, 2 November 2007

Comma, comma, comma, comma chameleon

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Why is this so hard for you?, originally uploaded by vebelfetzer.

Awful use of a comma and an inappropriate exclamation point.

This was brought to my attention by one of our new Twitter friends, Vebelfetzer (a.k.a. Eliza). Why don't you join in the fun challenge of attempting to write grammatically correct prose-bites using only 140 characters? When I joined Twitter I vowed never to stoop to txt spk or 1337 5p34k.

Follow us at http://twitter.com/grammarblog

Apologies for the title of this post, comma puns aren't easy to make up.

Labels: comma, exclamation marks, photos, punctuation, twitter

posted by Gez at 10:05 am 111 Comments

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Wednesday, 5 September 2007

Madrid: Rid Mad Commas Please,

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This is the front of a high street fashion shop on the Gran Via, Madrid:

The title amused me enough, the erroneous comma even more so. Add in the lower case ‘l’ at the start, and you have yourself a classic example of the fact that no matter what their nationality, marketeers go about their work with all the delicacy of a drunk French chauffeur in a Parisian tunnel.

Were only lefties allowed in? Does Arthur Scargill buy his slacks here?

So many questions.

Labels: comma, lefties, madrid, marketing copy, photos, punctuation, scargill

posted by Dan at 9:26 am 12 Comments

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