Commaphobia and Chisu

A cursory search of the net seems to indicate we lack a word in English for fear of punctuation. Perhaps that is because the former lingua franca of European scholarship, Latin, did just fine without punctuation, thank you. But times have changed. So, first, I propose adding "commaphobia" to the list of official phobias (after all there are words for fears of buttons and navels!). Then, there are a number of other lesser, yet recognizable, problematic relationships with punctuation, such as "semicolophobia", a common disgust for the semicolon found among Finnish high school English teachers, and "exclamania" which describes, rather than a fear, that effusive friend who cannot resist compulsive exclamation marks in every email, starting with "Hi!"

Now I will come out of the closest, I too have suffered from commaphobia. And, admit it, so do you. Are you fond of the slogan: "when in doubt, leave it [the comma] out" or does the semicolon make you deeply uneasy? Go ahead, self diagnose. After acceptance comes healing.


But, on second thought, lets blame English itself for problems with punctuation since it really does have a split personality. As Naomi Baron convincingly explains here, there have always been two approaches to punctuation in English, the grammatical approach and the rhetorical approach. The first says there are rules. Let's be honest: a whole broom closet full of them. The advocates of this approach say we can and should learn these rules. I have tried..and tried. The latter approach says, no no no, it all depends on how you want to express yourself; use punctuation to add rhythm, emphasis, and 'breathes' to your sentences. Written English, in this view, tries to emulate the natural rhythms of speech. Those fond of rules, on the other hand, want to emphasize the difference between sloppy speech and formal writing. Each of these approaches has had, and continues to have, its advocates, both in print and in writing pedagogy. Moreover, it is easy to give examples in which each side seems the sensible one.Yes, English is just schizo.

So I propose we need some simplified 'rules of thumb' for punctuation that neither burdens us with hard-to-translate advice, e.g. "when you take a breath add a comma", nor require mastery of grammatical jargon, e.g. "punctuate before a introductory participial or infinite phrase." The better the rule of thumb, the more cases it covers and the easier it is to grasp. A favorite I ran across once in a style guide: use colons to deliver the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words (Fowler). I hope you get it.

Alas, I don't have a complete set of these rules of thumb (or is it rules of thumbs?). If I did, I would put them in a book titled Punctuation for dummies like me and travel for a year on my royalties. But I can try my hand at one example that covers about thirty percent of the all my punctuation corrections in student writing!!! (sorry) Before I introduce this rule of thumb, let me illustrate its importance with some unpunctuated examples. I apologize that in order to have Chisu, the Finnish pop star, in the title of this blog post, I must now use a few unncessary song lyrics as examples, which, when it comes to teaching punctuation, is like eating soup with a fork.

Examples:

a. This could be a solution to our expert problems she thought. (-Chisu)

Does Chisu use commas?

b. While silent and a little fearful I am also patient and ingenious. (-Chisu)
c. As a the sleepy fog rose up to reveal the chilly waters of Lahdesjärvi lake and its surrounding 80's era dwellings one mathematician paused from running his ingenious simulations in order to gaze out the window. (-me)
d. In spite of much research into the causes of procrastination in writing researchers have uncovered little evidence for any evolutionary benefit. (-me)

Now I hope you will agree that these feel a bit hard to read or even ambiguous in the case of d. The source of the trouble, I would claim, is that in English we need to be able to spot the subject of the sentence quickly since the subject usually indicates who is doing what. This is in contrast to Finnish, which could care less about subjects. In the sentences above, the subjects are: a. she, b. I, c. one mathematician, and d. researchers. So the rule of thumb is this: when your subject is hard to spot quickly, put a comma before it to mark its place for the reader. Now this is a rule of thumb, so it is not precise and can be interpreted in stupid ways. But notice now how much better our sentences are to read!!! (note to self: take anti-exclamania medication)

Examples with punctuation:

a. This could be a solution to our expert problems, she thought.
b. While silent and a little fearful, I am also patient and ingenious.
c. As a the sleepy fog rose from the chilly waters of Lahdesjärvi lake and its surrounding 80's era dwellings, one mathematician paused from running his ingenious simulations in order to gaze out the window.
d. In spite of much research into the causes of procrastination in writing, researchers have uncovered little evidence for any evolutionary benefit.

Does this work for you?! Anyone else want to offer a good rule of thumb for punctuating in English?