I
recently “bought” a free Kindle book. The characters and situation
intrigued me, but I kept putting it down in frustration because it was
rife with grammatical errors--misspellings, awkward wording, fragments,
and run-ons. In particular, the frequent lack of proper commas slowed
my reading, created confusing sentences, and jarred me from the action,
thus detracting from my overall enjoyment. I was dismayed. Such a
great story! Where was the author’s editor? How did the author manage
to publish it in that state!? Oh, yes--by not charging anything.
I
confess that I didn’t fully understand when to use commas until I
became a tutor and had to teach others when to use them. After studying
them properly, I realized how essential they are for the readability of
a text. Yet more and more, I’ve seen an increase in the number of
writers--from students to Amazon authors--who disregard their importance and willfully disdain to learn their rules. As for why, the ease
of releasing text messages, blogs, online novels, and so forth has
inundated us with poorly edited language, so much that I suspect we’ve
become inured to it. We now find comma-related errors in everything from
church bulletins to newsprint to bestselling books. In my work as a
tutor, I’ve even heard some students declare that correct grammar looks
“wrong.” (I could comment here on the state of public high school
education, but it would sidetrack from my point.) In short, the proper
usage of commas in every medium has been going downhill, and I find it
deplorable.
I
am not keen to debate the respective merits of descriptive and
prescriptive grammar here. On a topic such as this, however, one would
do well to keep in mind these different perspectives: Descriptive
grammar simply describes how
people currently use a language, without saying whether it’s
right or wrong. Prescriptive grammar is the opposite--the collective
“rules” of a language, devised by “experts” from current or previous
grammatical trends and enforced by editors and teachers on both nonstandard
dialects and succeeding generations.
Any
sensible person would agree that a certain amount of “prescription” is
necessary in education for students to cultivate a common tongue and
clear communication. Still, a “living” language continually changes; we
do not now write in the style of Chaucer or Shakespeare or Ben Franklin
or Hawthorn, or even Mark Twain. With language in constant flux,
people will continually debate which changes should become part of our
language’s prescriptive
grammar, and which they should discourage from continued use. For
example, we’ve thankfully done away with the prescriptive rule about not
splitting infinitives, which was misguidedly based on Latin rather than
English grammar, and I wouldn’t be surprised if “they” will one day be
accepted as the singular, neutral form of “he or she,” considering its
frequent (currently "incorrect") use as such in both speech and writing.
Now,
what of commas? From a descriptive point of view, for whatever reason,
most modern writers do not use them consistently nor in accordance with
the “rules.” Shall we say, then, that prescriptive grammar should
follow the majority and let some of the comma rules slide into oblivion?
Who decides which ones are unnecessary for clarity? For as many cases
in which a comma must be used to avoid confusion, other examples for the
same rule may demonstrate that the sentence comes across clearly without
one. I, however, believe our current rules are valid and should be
promoted as they are.
The
uninitiated may not quite realize how, without proper commas, we are
often forced to reread to capture the right meaning. Upon sensing an
error in our understanding, our eyes and mind dart back through the
text, reinterpret the sentence, and continue on their way, rarely
dwelling on the passage long enough to comprehend why they stumbled over
the sentence the first time. Other times, however, the confusion is so
grave that we’re jolted unpleasantly out of the story and must study
the sentence multiple times to guess at the author’s intended meaning.
The culprit may be poor wording or, just as often, a missing or
misplaced comma. For instance, “That night lights inside her apartment
shone bright as day.” “Night lights” at first seems like the subject of
the sentence, but if so, “that” ought to read as “the” or “those,” so
it’s surely incorrect. A comma after night would clearly separate the
setting (“that night”) from the subject (“lights”), helping the reader
comprehend the sentence correctly the first time through.
Despite
the likelihood of confusing readers, many authors insist on using their
“natural grammar” in opposition to prescriptive rules and even logic.
For instance, many would rather place commas wherever they take a
breath--even though a hasty or overly-careful reading may result in very
peculiar pauses indeed. (For instance, “Don, was tired.”) Using a
comma when a reader should breathe is useful advice for a fourth grader,
perhaps, but terribly inaccurate and misleading for an older writer who is capable of a greater understanding and more consistent usage (assuming said writer does not suffer from dyslexia or any other number of issues that make writing more difficult than usual).
Continuing to follow such a flawed concept into adulthood strikes me as
naive and presumptuous--an insistence on one’s own, untutored
preference over what would be most convenient and efficient for the
reader.
One must understand that comma correctness is primarily necessary to prose. Poetry is a different matter--in part because ambiguity is an artistic
technique and writers may want the
reader to dwell upon and reread the lines in various ways to find some
profound meaning for themselves. Grammatical ambiguity in fiction,
however, should serve only as a means for humor or as a plot
complication between characters, never as a possible stumbling block for
readers. One might also make an exception for an intentional digression, though I can think of no suitable examples. Furthermore, should an author wish to break a rule to
achieve a literary effect, sense dictates that said author should first
understand the rules and the possible consequences of breaking them. The rest of the prose needs to state ideas clearly. Using
commas correctly will by no means diminish the author’s ability to
write creatively or vividly and will likely enhance the piece by allowing the text to flow unnoticed below the action occurring in the reader's imagination.
I'll leave the particulars of various comma rules for another time.
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