Thu 9 Mar 2006
I have recently been doing a lot of collaborative writing, and so have come face to face with the differences between my own and other people's grammatical habits. Two of them in particular are interesting to me.
Two spaces after a period
I use only one space at the end of a sentence, and ritually replace two spacers when I find them. Why do they exist at all? I think they break up the flow of the line and I constantly confuse them with two space typos of the kind that come between words in a sentence.
It turns out that the origin of the two space is a holdover from the typewriter. Typewriter fonts are generally monospaced – the same amount of space exists between each letter – and so two spaces after the period helped to mark off one sentence from the next. Since about 1982, however, fonts have almost entirely been proportionately spaced, so putting two spaces after the period just doesn't make sense anymore (if it ever did).
Commas before the last item in a list
I always put a comma before the last item in a list, whereas many folks don't. This would not be a big deal except that the lack of a convention can lead to a lot of confusion. This is especially true in sentences where each list item is a long phrase – a phenomenon that pops up waaaay too much in academic writing. But it's a problem even in simple sentences. Here's an example of a sentence that foregoes a comma at the end of the list at the expense of comprehension:
Jaime invited us over for a party and we brought maple syrup, Sunkist, crackers and cheese.
Now, if we're culinarily picky, we might want to know if Jaime is bringing some crackers and also some cheese, or if he's bringing a tray of crackers and cheese. Okay, not the best example. But the point remains – as long as we don't know whether the author likes to put commas before the last list item, we don't know which thing Jaime is bringing.
Here's another example:
I've managed to teach my dog to fetch, speak, shake hands, roll over and play dead.
Are those two separate tricks there at the end? We need to know, damnit!!
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I went to a fairly stuffy grammar school where we spent a bunch of time diagramming sentences and analysing dangling participles etc, and was always taught that the comma-list thing was acceptable either way. My wife would tell you otherwise, but I think of myself as a parsimonious comma user and therefore tend to leave the last one off. I could, I suppose, be persuaded either way.
However, there's no way I'm going to train myself out of two decades + of double-spacing after the period. No. Fucking. Way.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have half a bottle of Hendricks and a chilled martini glass waiting to help me kick off spring break.
Excellent. What are you doing discussing the finer points of grammar when you should be Spring Breaking???
About commas, I know 'technically' it's correct both ways, but 'technically' has got no common sense.
As to spaces, I'll just keep my find-and-replace macro handy.
Dude, I love that you're discovering the 2 space thing. I learned to type on a typewriter, and it made a difference. You needed it. And yes, even in the late 80s. The convention only started to be regularly criticized in the mid-late 90s.
But you're right about the comma thing, it's just weird without that last comma.
"Common sense" is another way of saying ideology.
Since I'm devoting all of my mental energy to the 40 undergraduate archaeology projects I have to grade over "spring break," and I'm not really willing to think it through, I will just point out that this new orthodoxy of yours has an ideological component – something about regimes of control and technology, I think – and leave it at that.
I don't know how to use your fancy "emoticons," but I am smiling back at you.
Are you kidding about this comma thing? C'mon, man, you just need to learn to extract information from the context instead of being hand-fed from the syntax. For example, I was extremely puzzled by your first example, because obviously Jaime wasn't bringing anything to the party — he's the host! He may be providing something, but he won't "bring" anything to his own place! And for your second example, obviously "roll over and play dead" is one trick, because if it were two it would have been listed as "and roll over and play dead". See, it's simple!
Good point, Tracy. Actually, why don't we do away with punctuation completely, then we can all aspire to be the great contextual reader that you are. Although since 'context' seems to mean 'literal' to you, I'd say the vast majority of writing is actually way beyond your capacity!
(You started it!)
Nice article! But since we're on the whole grammar subject, you may want to replace "�" with "'".
Just came across this while doing some quick checking on the use of a comma before the last list item. I'm almost 50 and I can accept that our language (words) is ever-changing, but I abhor that grammar is also changing.
As for the use of two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence, I learned on a typewriter. As such, I am unable to let it go and my eyes don't like the lack of space (no pun intended) when only one space exists.
If you really want to get picky, how about the rule of putting a period or comma within quotation marks. I came across this tiny tidbit of information during one of my searches on the Internet …
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/marks/quotation.htm#footnote
I never liked putting those things inside the quotation marks anyway, except in certain circumstances. Call me anal-retentive or suffering from OCD.
I agree with 'Dave G.'. Our choices are fundamentally driven by how we were taught. Some folks don't seem to care either way and have the luxury of "blowing with the wind".
:*)