Serious Comma

Ever since I started this blog my stepfather Igi has been giving me advice on how to manage certain things in it, checks that everything is in the right place among other things. However, sometimes it happens that he suggest corrections that I believe are not justified. This might cause us to discuss for a while until we settle it down. The topics that we have disagreements range from the way Google searches through the blogs, to the way we express ourselves when writing, and … and we have even discussed about that last comma (the one I purposely wrote right before the ‘and’). He argues that adding a comma before a grammatical conjunction is ungrammatical. Since then I would be careful adding these commas, yet I was confused as I would occasionally observe them in newspapers, books and other written media.

It was until my friend Alan pointed out that these commas have a name – serial commas – and showed me the Wikipedia article about them. First off it is surprisingly long, specially for an article dealing with something as minuscule as a punctuation issue (I bet that there are many other important issues whose Wikipedia articles are not half as comprehensive or complete – or long). From this article we have as a fact that these commas don’t have anything ungrammatical in them. There is not even a clear trend on whether they belong to a more British oriented English vs. a more American English. The only thing that is clear is what these commas can both create and avoid: Ambiguity. It is actually sort of hard to explain exactly how and when this ambiguity arises or exactly when it is recommended to be used (if it was simple the article wouldn’t be that long anyway). However it is easy to see that it is definitely useful at times, though in certain occasions it might make certain sentences to be incomprehensible. If you are bored and want to know more about it you should definitely check out the Wikipedia article, it has many really interesting and sometimes hilarious examples. Below are some of my favorite examples of cases when a serial comma can make the difference between a well sounding sentence and a really confusing mess:

“My favourite types of sandwiches are pastrami, ham, cream cheese and peanut butter and jelly.” (do I like creme cheese and peanut butter in a sandwich? or is it peanut butter and jelly? can you tell?)

“To my mother, Aury Tovar, and God” (here the presence of the serial comma makes the sentence confusing – is Aury Tovar my mother yes or no?)

And this is by far my favorite, published by The Times unintentionally on a documentary:

“highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.” (no comments – )

Its clear then that this little ink in your paper can make a huge difference in your college essays, so you better pay attention. Pretty serious comma huh?

PS: BTW, just in this article I added commas without really taking too much care about whether or not they would make things more confusing. I just want to re-read it later and see how bad it is.

Filed under: Languages, ambiguity, confusing, corrections, discuss, effect, giving me advice, hard to explain, not justified, recommended to be used, serial comma, understand, ungrammatical, useful, written English

Connecting with China

During the last two years I have studied Mandarin to the point that I am almost fluent. In the couple of times I have been there I have made good friends there, traveled around quite a bit and have learned to appreciate a minuscule part of the many things the Chinese culture has to offer.

Calling my friends through Skype yesterday made me realize that I want to keep myself more in contact with China. Not only I really like many things there, but also I would like to practice my Chinese to keep improving it. For that reason that I decided on to start another blog: 魏立宁的日记 (this translates to Wei Li Ning’s Diary – Wei Li Ning is my Chinese name ).

For those of you Chinese speakers, don’t expect too much as my writing skills are not great… yet . This blog will be dedicated to write about China, what’s going on there and my perspectives about it. If you can read Chinese, give it a trial.

Filed under: Languages, Blogging, Chinese, Diary, Experiencing Cultures

Accidental Success?

Ok, so this is like the 50th time I erase and start all over this post. I have been debating on what to write for over 4 hours and with help of my pseudo-ADD have managed to always find a ‘great idea’ of what to write about but then I stop halfway through, think the idea is lame, go on and watch youtube, check my mail and not really accomplish anything to then proceed and start all over again. At least I’m glad it’s summer and I don’t have any tight deadlines otherwise I’d be totally screwed. Now that is 4a.m I think I have finally come up with something worth reading (and I should as I am getting sleepy).

Among the random things I was doing while avoiding to write this article was a couple of Skype calls to some of my friends in China. For some reason I had never thought of using Skype to call to China as I thought it would not work (mainly due to the Golden Shield Project – also know as the Chinese Great Firewall). However, today I just decided to give it a try and it surprisingly worked (actually the audio quality was better than many other skype calls I have had… weird). I haven’t talked to these two friends for over a year and it was very cool to hear from them. Now that I know I can do this and given that I have a weird schedule as evidenced from the posting time of this article, I proposed to my friends I would call them frequently, get to practice my Chinese and keep in contact with them. Now there is this thought that bugs my mind: Most of the Chinese I know was taught to me throught lessons focusing on cultural/social/political aspects of China. In particular, the last course I took was focused mainly on issues relating to human rights, democratization and matters of the like. I wounder how safe/unsafe/strange would be to ask my friends for their opinions regarding these topics. I mean, I have already all the vocabulary to do so, so should I do it?

I leave you with a song from the Naxi ethnic minority that reminds me of my trip to China. Let me know if you like it. I am finally off for today.

Filed under: Languages, Life