So confused- Grammar Question

[BlackShanglan]

I never went to college and haven't a clue what textbook you and Remec are referring to. My cousin, however, works in a college textbook store and could most likely pick it up for me. Title?

There isn't any single "definitive" handbook to American grammar and usage; with that said, there are a number of good grammar handbooks out there. Remec was referring to Harcourt and Brace's grammar handbook; I've found The Blair Handbook very helpful as well. It is concise, clear, thorough, and well-indexed. If you want something more formal and academic, there's the MLA handbook / style guide.

You might want to check Amazon - I know that Blair is available there, and often college bookstore prices are steep. You can often pick up used copies online as well, because students realize that they can sell them used online for more than the bookstore will give them for their used copies.

If your sister knows any college professors, she might also ask them if they've got a spare grammar handbook laying about. Publishers send professors stacks of preview copies of books to review in hopes that they will use them in their classes, so they've often got any number of them clogging up their shelves. I've been given free books from several professors (bless them).

 

[Eluard]

All right. Flog me and tie tin cans to my tail if you like, because I hate the "read it out loud and see if it sounds right" maxim. I hate it for three reasons:

(1) It prevents people from learning the actual rules governing comma usage and convinces them that they do not exist.

(2) It lures the innocent into making a vast array of grammatical errors stemming from the fact that commas, periods, dashes, and semicolons all create pauses and all sound pretty much identical - but should not be used in the same way.

(3) It encourages people to believe in rules that do not exist, adding to their confusion about the rules that do exist.

As a case in point of number three, there is no grammatical rule about comma usage specific to the words "which" or "where." There are grammatical rules about comma usage and restrictive and non-restrictive modifying phrases, structures which often use those words, but the rule is about the punctuation of certain types of phrases, not about the words.

Both of the examples the original poster has given contain modifying phrases - groups of words that describe an object elsewhere in the sentence. Below, I've italicized the modifying phrases and boldfaced the things they modify:

A dream can be as deep as a pirate’s chest, which hides gold and other treasure.

Dreams can be as deep as the night sky, where stars and comets dance.

The rule for comma usage with such phrases is that non-restrictive modifying phrases are set off with commas and restrictive modifying phrases are not. So what are restrictive and non-restrictive modifying phrases?

A restrictive phrase further restricts or limits the number of things that the original object could have been referring to. Here is an example:

"We went to the library and I pointed to the shelf where I left the book."

"Shelf" could refer to any shelf in the library. But the modifying phrase here further restricts or limits what the speaker is referring to - actually, only the shelf where s/he left the book. That makes the modifying phrase restrictive. It should not be preceded by a comma.

A non-restrictive modifying phrase does not further restrict or limit the number of things that the modified object could have been referring to. Here is an example of that:

"We went up to the fifth floor of the library, where I'd left the book on a shelf some days before."

It would be an unusual circumstance in which the speaker could have been referring to more than one library; in most cases, then, "the fifth floor of the library" could mean only one possible location. For this reason, the additional information (it's where the speaker left the book) doesn't further narrow the number of places that fit the description. The modifying phrase is non-restrictive, then, and does need a comma before it. If the sentence continued on past the modifying phrase, it would also need a comma after it: "We went up to the fifth floor of the library, where I'd left the book on a shelf some days before, and started looking for it."

What makes your examples from the children's book tricky is that they are a good example of the fact that context can make the same exact sentence function in different ways. In the example above, for instance, it's possible for the phrase "where I'd left the book on a shelf some days before" to be restrictive; if there was more than one library that the speaker could have been referring to, and if the additional information that it was the one where he'd left the book then narrowed the possibilities to one, the phrase would be restrictive and would not take commas.

So, for the example from the children's book, there are two possibilities:

(1) A dream can be as deep as a pirate’s chest which hides gold and other treasure.

Restrictive modifying phrase with no comma. The chest is not just any pirate's chest, but specifically one of the smaller group of chests that contain gold and treasure. Only those chests are being compared to the dream, and not all pirate chests fit that description.

(2) A dream can be as deep as a pirate’s chest, which hides gold and other treasure.

Non-restrictive modifying phrase with a comma. Here, you're telling the audience that the modifying phrase does not further narrow the things that could be identified by the phrase "pirate's chest." For that to be true, then all pirates' chests must contain gold and treasure. Now the modifying phrase isn't limiting meaning (just the chests with treasure in them) but instead supplying a definition: a pirate chest, that thing that always hides gold and treasure.

The same is true of the other sentence. Without a comma, dreams are like a specific sort of night sky - one where stars and comets dance, which isn't always the case. With the comma, dreams are like all night skies in general, which are all characterized by dancing stars and comets.

Now. If that's not enough to make people wish they'd never broached the topic, I don't know what is.

Shanglan

Great post — I'm saving it to favourites!

I'd pretty much worked this out inductively, because this is just what I do — but it's great to see it written out.

Grammar isn't allowed to be taught in Australia — it's thought to encourage the Fascistic idea that some writing is better than others. No students know it, and their teachers don't know it either.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Great post — I'm saving it to favourites!

I'd pretty much worked this out inductively, because this is just what I do — but it's great to see it written out.

Grammar isn't allowed to be taught in Australia — it's thought to encourage the Fascistic idea that some writing is better than others. No students know it, and their teachers don't know it either.

... You're not joking, I take it.

Well, we don't teach much grammar here in the U.S.A, either and for the same reason.

 

[BlackShanglan]

No students know it, and their teachers don't know it either.

That's the ugly truth at the bottom of a lot of this. Students aren't learning the rules of grammar because their teachers don't really know them - and don't want to teach them, either. I'm sure that it's pretty far from the favorite topic of most people, but it's shocking how little is getting taught, and I say that from personal experience. Most of my real precision on the topic comes from my own independent study after I left college.

I suppose that that is the real root of my dislike of the "use a comma when you would naturally pause" rule. I've too often seen it used by people who ought to have been teaching the actual rules of comma usage. I think you're right that the "everyone's writing has value" movement has something to do with this; I also think it was aided enthusiastically along by teachers who knew that they were shaky on the rules of grammar and found it more appealing to let them slide than to first drill themselves in the knowledge and then find a way to get it into their students. Granted, teachers have a very heavy workload to deal with, but this is one of the areas that most frequently is neglected.

 

[Eluard]

That's the ugly truth at the bottom of a lot of this. Students aren't learning the rules of grammar because their teachers don't really know them - and don't want to teach them, either. I'm sure that it's pretty far from the favorite topic of most people, but it's shocking how little is getting taught, and I say that from personal experience. Most of my real precision on the topic comes from my own independent study after I left college.

I suppose that that is the real root of my dislike of the "use a comma when you would naturally pause" rule. I've too often seen it used by people who ought to have been teaching the actual rules of comma usage. I think you're right that the "everyone's writing has value" movement has something to do with this; I also think it was aided enthusiastically along by teachers who knew that they were shaky on the rules of grammar and found it more appealing to let them slide than to first drill themselves in the knowledge and then find a way to get it into their students. Granted, teachers have a very heavy workload to deal with, but this is one of the areas that most frequently is neglected.

This is all certainly true in Australia. English teachers often don't even like discussing literature and would much prefer to be drilling students on the latest feminism-marxism-deconstructionism dogma. It's easy, it's "relevant", and you don't need to know anything. But I really don't want to turn this into a political thread…

Stella — how much am I not joking about Australia? Here's how much: In the absolute top girls' school in Sydney — the place where the best of the very best students are meant to go — the teacher of Latin was finding it hard to teach the subject without teaching the basics of grammar. But she had to do it with herself and all the girls hiding the book under the desk in case the Headmistress walked in to the room suddenly. It is actually forbidden to teach grammer, and not just in the public schools where educational chaos is allowed to reign, but even in the pay-through-the-nose private school system. And this goes a long way back. Only very gradually is this being rolled back.

By the way Shanglan — what is the name of the Harcourt and Brace grammar guide? I might look for it on Amazon.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Here are a some of the titles I mentioned:

The Blair Handbook . This link is to the newest 5th edition; earlier editions are very good, and you can get them much more cheaply. That's true of pretty much all of the grammar texts. The rules don't really change; they just swap in and out things like writing process guides, research and citation materials, and other add-ons.

Harbrace College Handbook (Harcourt and Brace).

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition . This one is more for the full research process, with information on grammar and punctuation integrated into a larger work on the construction of research documents.

Hope that helps! There are other good grammars out there too; I've found the Bedford Handbok and Allyn and Bacon useful.

 

[Eluard]

You can only trust a grammar checker on a program so far as well.

I use word to type my stuff, and I'll type something exactly how I want it, and it'll trigger the grammar checker, when i go to check, either it throws commas in in appropriate places, or doesn't like my word usage. It drives me crazy. There is a website that posts "cutesy" stories to their "newsletter" that are relevant to the site itself. For the longest time they must have used Word to proof some of the stories because everytime I submitted, it would kick my story out for "comma usage" and it would drive me crazy, because in order for me to not be kicked out, I would have to use word's grammar checker and accept it's suggestions and it would make large portions of my stories not make a lick of sense. I would have to practically retype the whole blooming thing so I stopped trying to submit to them.

Agreed! My particular bug-bear with Word's grammar checker is its dislike of long setences. Every time a sentence of mine gets to be more than 4 lines long it begins yapping like one of those annoying white terriers that looks like a cross between a dog and a mop. Personally I'm with Stella Omega on this: I like long sentences, I like 'em really long sometimes — in fact in obscene Pychonesque length, when I'm in that mood — and I really resent Microsoft telling me that I can't have them.

 

[Eluard]

Here are a some of the titles I mentioned:

The Blair Handbook . This link is to the newest 5th edition; earlier editions are very good, and you can get them much more cheaply. That's true of pretty much all of the grammar texts. The rules don't really change; they just swap in and out things like writing process guides, research and citation materials, and other add-ons.

Harbrace College Handbook (Harcourt and Brace).

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition . This one is more for the full research process, with information on grammar and punctuation integrated into a larger work on the construction of research documents.

Hope that helps! There are other good grammars out there too; I've found the Bedford Handbok and Allyn and Bacon useful.

Thanks so much! Much appreciated!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Thanks so much! Much appreciated!

My pleasure. I'm curious, though, about what differences in grammar may exist between Australia and the United States. I know that the comma splice is not generally considered a flaw in England; what is the Australian view on the topic?

 

[Eluard]

My pleasure. I'm curious, though, about what differences in grammar may exist between Australia and the United States. I know that the comma splice is not generally considered a flaw in England; what is the Australian view on the topic?

Since grammar has long been abandoned here I doubt if there is a national view, other than "if it enhances your feeling of self-worth then by all means do it, whatever it is." My own view is that I would avoid it and use a semi-colon. (But no one here uses semi-colons but me.)

 

[Eluard]

That's the ugly truth at the bottom of a lot of this. Students aren't learning the rules of grammar because their teachers don't really know them - and don't want to teach them, either. I'm sure that it's pretty far from the favorite topic of most people, but it's shocking how little is getting taught, and I say that from personal experience. Most of my real precision on the topic comes from my own independent study after I left college.

I suppose that that is the real root of my dislike of the "use a comma when you would naturally pause" rule. I've too often seen it used by people who ought to have been teaching the actual rules of comma usage. I think you're right that the "everyone's writing has value" movement has something to do with this; I also think it was aided enthusiastically along by teachers who knew that they were shaky on the rules of grammar and found it more appealing to let them slide than to first drill themselves in the knowledge and then find a way to get it into their students. Granted, teachers have a very heavy workload to deal with, but this is one of the areas that most frequently is neglected.

I think there's another aspect to the reluctance of teachers and education boards to teach grammar: as you've pointed out, the rule of comma usage for restrictive clauses is ultimately a matter of the logic of the sentence. But it is very unfashionable in Humanities circles to believe that logic has anything to do with well-ordered expression. Better just to think that it's all a matter of pausing for breath — without ever raising the question as to why it is natural to pause in that place. This "pausing" view also shifts the whole issue from the printed word to the speaking aloud of those words, from semantics to performance/utterance, if you like.

Just talking about pauses means that the logic of sentences never need arise. And in many modern classrooms (certainly in Australia) it is guaranteed never to arise.

 

[Alex De Kok]

Despite being one of those who advocated the 'if there's a natural pause, add a comma' rule of thumb, I was actually taught English grammar back in the nineteen-fifties (left school in 1961, started University in 1996 - how's that for a 'gap year'!?)

I think I have a good grasp of grammar, but it's so long ago now since I learned that I seriously doubt if I could explain it as cogently and coherently as some of the posts in this thread. I've enjoyed reading through, and even an old fossil (or was it COBOL dinosaur) like me can still learn.

The comments about Word's grammar checker amused me. Using it on fiction, particularly dialogue (English spelling!), irritates me a lot, so much so that I rarely use it. I only use spell-checker if I'm trying to write 'American', and I find myself deleting a lot of u's and changing s to z. What was the quote, 'two nations divided by a common language'?

Alex

 

[BlackShanglan]

The comments about Word's grammar checker amused me. Using it on fiction, particularly dialogue (English spelling!), irritates me a lot, so much so that I rarely use it. I only use spell-checker if I'm trying to write 'American', and I find myself deleting a lot of u's and changing s to z. What was the quote, 'two nations divided by a common language'?

Alex

We used to have language to divide us, but now we have President Bush.

Yes, Word's grammar-checker is an abyssmal thing, I think because of what Eluard points out - that the fine detail of punctuation of a sentence is about logic, and the computer can't handle that neatly, nor context either. I had a friend in college who was from Sweden and who would ask me to look at some of his papers before he turned them in. Normally they weren't too bad; they had the sorts of mistakes that were clearly from someone who didn't speak English as a first language, but people tend to be more forgiving of those. Then one day he showed me a real train wreck of a thing, all over the place. When I asked what happened, he said that he'd struggled so much with his grammar that he'd finally decided to let MS Word correct it all for him.

 

[tickledkitty]

We used to have language to divide us, but now we have President Bush.

Yes, Word's grammar-checker is an abyssmal thing, I think because of what Eluard points out - that the fine detail of punctuation of a sentence is about logic, and the computer can't handle that neatly, nor context either. I had a friend in college who was from Sweden and who would ask me to look at some of his papers before he turned them in. Normally they weren't too bad; they had the sorts of mistakes that were clearly from someone who didn't speak English as a first language, but people tend to be more forgiving of those. Then one day he showed me a real train wreck of a thing, all over the place. When I asked what happened, he said that he'd struggled so much with his grammar that he'd finally decided to let MS Word correct it all for him.

Spell Check really can make a hash out of things. You have to have a pretty good handle on American spelling and grammar to even be able to use it. I only use it for work to check for misspellings and little bits of grammar that I've overlooked. It really only helps in checking for small mistakes. I'm surprised they don't have a British version.

Another problem I have, although my expectations are pretty low to begin with, is that sometimes it will want to capitalize a word that I don't see any reason to capitalize, or it will insist on changing the spelling or tense on a word when I don't want it to. I know there are probably ways to correct this, but I am much too lazy to figure them out. It doesn't come up that often anyway.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Spell Check really can make a hash out of things. You have to have a pretty good handle on American spelling and grammar to even be able to use it. I only use it for work to check for misspellings and little bits of grammar that I've overlooked. It really only helps in checking for small mistakes. I'm surprised they don't have a British version.

They do. I think Alex was saying that he sometimes wants to produce an American-spelled version of something. I've done the same in the other direction. You can set the dictionary to a variety of English sub-species.

Another problem I have, although my expectations are pretty low to begin with, is that sometimes it will want to capitalize a word that I don't see any reason to capitalize, or it will insist on changing the spelling or tense on a word when I don't want it to. I know there are probably ways to correct this, but I am much too lazy to figure them out. It doesn't come up that often anyway.

This is why I don't use the grammar checker. It's not just that it's sometimes incorrect, but also that at times I'm baffled even to know why it could possibly be recommending what it is. The little green squiggles quickly got distracting and didn't seem to do anything useful for me.

 

[Alex De Kok]

They do. I think Alex was saying that he sometimes wants to produce an American-spelled version of something. I've done the same in the other direction. You can set the dictionary to a variety of English sub-species.

Exactly! My English English spelling is good enough not to need spell-check most of the time, although I usually run it over final drafts, but sometimes if I'm trying to write American English I need to use the US English version.

This is why I don't use the grammar checker. It's not just that it's sometimes incorrect, but also that at times I'm baffled even to know why it could possibly be recommending what it is. The little green squiggles quickly got distracting and didn't seem to do anything useful for me.

My personal horror was the Grammatik grammar checker in WordPerfect, a WP I still like, although these days I'm in the process of migrating a lot of stuff to Linux, so I usually use OpenOffice, as I have it in both Windows and Linux versions.

Alex

 

[Eluard]

My pleasure. I'm curious, though, about what differences in grammar may exist between Australia and the United States. I know that the comma splice is not generally considered a flaw in England; what is the Australian view on the topic?

I dug back into memory to think of the only advice I have ever heard on comma spiced sentences and every teacher who ever said anything about this recommended dividing the sentence into two separate sentences. This was advice that I scrupulously ignored as whenever I tried it the sentences just looked wrong. Comma spicing makes a connection of some kind between disconnected thoughts. Separating them breaks any such connection. Only the semi-colon seems to preserve the connection, but respect the fact that the separate clauses are superficially unconnected.

I take it the US advice is to divide into two sentences?

 

[BlackShanglan]

I dug back into memory to think of the only advice I have ever heard on comma spiced sentences and every teacher who ever said anything about this recommended dividing the sentence into two separate sentences. This was advice that I scrupulously ignored as whenever I tried it the sentences just looked wrong. Comma spicing makes a connection of some kind between disconnected thoughts. Separating them breaks any such connection. Only the semi-colon seems to preserve the connection, but respect the fact that the separate clauses are superficially unconnected.

I take it the US advice is to divide into two sentences?

There are a number of options - division, use of a semi-colon, use of a comma with a coordinating conjunction, subordination of one of the elements. They all share the point that you make here and, nicely, above in your post on the logic of a sentence: they help to indicate the logical connection of one element to the other.

It's such a pleasure to meet another person who appreciates the semicolon. I recall reading one of those wretched lists of stylistic "rules" produced by some self-admiring person who feels that "always" and "never" are good ways to use elements of the English language; the point at which he advised his readers to never use semicolons was the point at which I gave up with a derisive snort.

They may have my semicolons when they pry them from my cold, dead hooves.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Agreed! My particular bug-bear with Word's grammar checker is its dislike of long setences. Every time a sentence of mine gets to be more than 4 lines long it begins yapping like one of those annoying white terriers that looks like a cross between a dog and a mop. Personally I'm with Stella Omega on this: I like long sentences, I like 'em really long sometimes — in fact in obscene Pychonesque length, when I'm in that mood — and I really resent Microsoft telling me that I can't have them.

Talk dirty to me, baby!

My personal horror was the Grammatik grammar checker in WordPerfect, a WP I still like, although these days I'm in the process of migrating a lot of stuff to Linux, so I usually use OpenOffice, as I have it in both Windows and Linux versions.

If I may say so, your comma-usage in this sentence is particularly British. There's a particular rhythm...

They may have my semicolons when they pry them from my cold, dead hooves.

Oh, I'm right with you there! And an em-dash often does the job for me as well.

 

[Eluard]

Talk dirty to me, baby!

If I may say so, your comma-usage in this sentence is particularly British. There's a particular rhythm...

They may have my semicolons when they pry them from my cold, dead hooves.

Oh, I'm right with you there! And an em-dash often does the job for me as well.

My god I have met fellow human beings who appreciate semicolons and em dashes!!!! I'm not alone!!!

Maybe we should form The Semicolon Preservation Society — we could call ourselves the semi-anal-retentives!

 

[BlackShanglan]

My god I have met fellow human beings who appreciate semicolons and em dashes!!!! I'm not alone!!!

Maybe we should form The Semicolon Preservation Society — we could call ourselves the semi-anal-retentives!

*laughs*

Brilliant! Inspired! Sign me up.

 

[tickledkitty]

Sign me up too. My motto is "The em-dash is the new comma."

 

[Remec]

Sign me up too. My motto is "The em-dash is the new comma."

*nod*
I find myself switching between the various modes of connecting elements of a sentence for the same reason you try to use synonyms when having a particular word or phrase keep cropping up in whatever you're currently writing about.


How do you feel about the use of ellipses in nondialogue text?

 

[Stella_Omega]

*nod*
I find myself switching between the various modes of connecting elements of a sentence for the same reason you try to use synonyms when having a particular word or phrase keep cropping up in whatever you're currently writing about.


How do you feel about the use of ellipses in nondialogue text?

My feeling is that ellipses in non-dialogue text turn that text into dialogue-- they will make the reader aware of the author.

(ETA) Not always a bad thing, you understand... but something to be aware of.

 

[BlackShanglan]

My feeling is that ellipses in non-dialogue text turn that text into dialogue-- they will make the reader aware of the author.

(ETA) Not always a bad thing, you understand... but something to be aware of.

What a beautifully trenchant observation.

And isn't it a joy and wonder to see a thread on grammar run to two full pages?