Is comma use changing? (For the worse, naturally)

Kylara said:
Also one (American) seminar leader insists that 'til is a word. It is not. Until is till with a prefix. Without the prefix you use till. not 'til. You can't remove a prefix and not use the rest of the word. till is not an affix -_- but apparently the mangled word 'til is acceptable in North America.
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It's apparently acceptable, over here, too -- it's listed as a variant of "till" by Collins online which usually makes clear what are out-and-out Americanisms, though it does qualify it with "informal", and though my ODE doesn't have a separate listing for it (and it makes it clear that "till" itself is somewhat informal now) it mentions it without comment here:
Interestingly, while it is commonly assumed that till is an abbreviated form of until (the spellings 'till and 'til reflect this), till is in fact the earlier form. Until appears to have been formed by the addition of Old Norse und 'as far as' several hundred years after the date of the first records for till.
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And since I love this kind of thing, here's what the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say:
until (prep.) c.1200, from till (prep.). The first element is un- "as far as, up to" (also in unto), from Old Norse *und "as far as, up to," from Proto-Germanic *und- (cognates: Old English oð "up to, as far as," Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Gothic und), from PIE *nti-, from root *ant- "front, forehead" (see ante). The two syllables have the same meaning. Originally also used of persons and places. As a conjunction from c.1300. Similar formation in Swedish intill, Danish indtil. The Modern German equivalent, bis (Old High German biaz), is a similar compound, of Old High German bi "by, at, to" and zu "to.
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Or as the ODE says regarding the two bits meaning the same "(the sense thus duplicated)" -- for emphasis, perhaps?
 
Kylara said:
Eugh. I agree with Mouse "stupid" :p infuriates me. Especially as I have just got work back from being marked by an American who has scribbled all over my grammar and inserted weird and wrong grammar bits. Infuriating. Fair enough not liking the style, but the grammar is correct. Also English uni, so you shouldn't be marking me down for my preference of English words and grammar because you don't like them.

Also one (American) seminar leader insists that 'til is a word. It is not. Until is till with a prefix. Without the prefix you use till. not 'til. You can't remove a prefix and not use the rest of the word. till is not an affix -_- but apparently the mangled word 'til is acceptable in North America.

GRAMMAR ANGER
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According to Webster's (American), it is till, but til and 'til are listed as variants. The OED has till, and MS word recommends replacement with until. Till and until both came from Old English (Northumbrian) til. The un- in until is from an addition of Old Norse und (und+til->until). As for commas, they can be tricky; that is why prudent folks use a reference when they are unsure.
 
Michael Colton said:
This is actually a topic I have been wondering about. Is there a good resource for comparing comma use between the States and the UK? Because I tend to see UK folks omit an awful lot of commas I would use. I have had UK folks correct my comma use and then I go back to some of my American style guides (Chicago, AP, whatever) and could not find anything wrong with it.
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The British do not typically use the Oxford comma; you would not use a comma before the and in a list of three or more items. I am aware of no other differences. However, you could try to obtain a copy of New Hart's Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors and compare them.
 
These look to me to both having omitted a comma.

Any remaining wintry showers, near Kent will die out by the afternoon.
Any remaining wintry showers, near Kent, will die out by the afternoon.
Any remaining wintry showers will die out by the afternoon. (passes the test)

Little noticed in the debate on how Europe should deal with Russia, looms a big anniversary.
Little noticed, in the debate on how Europe should deal with Russia, looms a big anniversary.
Little noticed in the debate, on how Europe should deal with Russia, looms a big anniversary.
Little noticed in the debate looms a big anniversary.(Though this seems to pass the test it seems to only squeak by.)
Little noticed looms a big anniversary.(seems a bit awkward and could be) Little noticed, looms a big anniversary.
Which in a quirky way validates the original.
 
Wiglaf said:
The British do not typically use the Oxford comma; you would not use a comma before the and in a list of three or more items. I am aware of no other differences.
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Well, I don't know what the UK principles are but I've noticed the same thing as Michael - UK folks use far fewer commas than US folks do.

As far as comma errors, many result from leaving a second one out when it's called for but many also just reveal a poorly constructed sentence and the fix is to revise that rather than add or subtract punctuation. The first one's fine - just lose the comma if you're referring only to showers near Kent (adding one after also works but neither seem needed, even to an American). Rewrite if something else is meant, though. The second is just bad faux-art prose. Speak plainly, in forward gear: "A significant but little-noticed anniversary looms over the debate on how Europe should deal with Russia:" etc.
 
J-Sun said:
many also just reveal a poorly constructed sentence and the fix is to revise that rather than add or subtract punctuation.
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Good point -- though I have to say I have no trouble with the second one (if the comma is removed), which perhaps is evidence for Brits being happy with fewer commas. I'm also somewhat embarrassed, following your "faux-art" comment, to admit that it's something I might have written myself. I think your revision is perhaps clearer, but to me it's not so interesting to read.
 
The Oxford comma is no longer in favor in style manuals in the US. At my advanced age, I don't hold with these new-fangled styles, so I'll still use it as long as I can get away with it, because in some sentences it makes for greater clarity.
 
I use the Oxford comma quite a bit. Sometimes I "hear" a pause before the final item, and sometimes I don't.

The only time I feel uncertain about a comma is when I hear a partial pause. Which is why I think we need different gradations of comma, semicommas and demisemicommas and hemidemisemicommas. Someone get onto it now, please.
 
On the question of commas, my memory of the long-ago days at school are that I was taught to put a comma before 'or', 'because' and 'but', but NEVER before 'and'. I'm now picking up, from critiques, that I have this completely wrong.

It could be my dodgy memory, since I haven't written anything in the intervening years, until last March, or it could be that I misunderstood and learned it incorrectly to begin with. Or, long shot this, I could be right and usage had changed over the years.
 
The issue with 'because' is that there are a number of them: because the conjunction (before which I would usually** put a comma); because the adverb, which would not usually** have a comma in front of it.... Oh, and the preposition: "Because!"

There is also the use of because as a noun (as can be found in the first sentence above). ;)


** - Because there are occasions when a comma is not appropriate (as in this sentence). ;)
 
Cat's Cradle said:
I suspect there is another issue here that (I think) hasn't been mentioned...certainly the writing for news sites is often terrible these days (CNN, BBC, etc), but I suspect another huge contributing factor to the plethora of typos we see nowadays online, and in print, is a dearth of copy editing...even copy editors. I think every single news organization on the planet has gone through dramatic cutbacks in staff over the last 10-15 years...I read last year that one of the major news agencies in the U.S. had fired all of its professional photographers, and was switching to having the writers take their own digital photos in the field for their stories (or to using stock photos in storage). I haven't specifically read that copy editors had been targeted for downsizing, but I think it's clear that copy proofing is either not being done, or perhaps often is being done solely by the newswriters themselves. (I would guess that a lot of news stories at major news sites are being written by freelancers too, who perhaps are paid for the volume of their work, and not for the polishing of it.) Just my thoughts, and I may be absolutely wrong! :)
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Absolutely, this is a big issue. My husband runs The Escapist Magazine and a number of other sites for Defy (formerly Alloy Digital) Media, and he sees this all the time. They had to cut all their copy editors years ago. In a market where you have an ever-shrinking pool of professional writers and content creaters being forced to compete on equal ground with amateurs who essentially do their job for free, quality control is basically the first thing to go. Think about it; in this market, money is generally made through ad revenues. All advertisers care about (as long as the content is not obscene or incredibly inflammatory, and sometimes not even then) is the number of "click-throughs" they get and the number of hits the page featuring their ad gets. In a numbers game, people can and do post outright lies just to entice people to click on that link. Even if people only visit the page to gape in horror at the atrocity being committed in the name of "journalism," a click is a click.

The more advertisers figure this out and reduce or eliminate their ad contracts with "professional" websites/magazines, the more they flock to support sites that don't pay their writers anything but the (dubious) privilege of "being published" and instead use a shotgun approach, just throwing all kinds of junk at the world, hoping some of it will stick and surrounding hapless visitors with nests of interconnected links and more links. The sales model is switching now from a more personal and content-driven individual approach to an automated, numbers-based, auction style format with the rise of ad exchanges, where content and quality seem less and less relevant.

One would hope that adult consumers would be at least capable of judging the relative quality level of the writing on offer, but it seems even this is too much to hope for in many cases. There is still a strongly pervasive mentality that, "If it is published, then it must be right and good and correct in both fact and in style." Even our teachers can fall into this trap and pass it on to their students. It is becoming less and less true for books published by the top publishing houses or "news" from the major news outlets, and it may never have been true in a general sense for the web. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop people from imitating what they see. Bad grammar and poor spelling spread like a cancer once the gatekeepers of the editing professions were gone. But hey, this was just a boon for the ad execs who can get more for less now by forcing the "good" down to the level of the "bad" and the "ugly" if they want to stay in business. Once you see a mistake in print so many times, the current ivory tower linguists decide to call it an "accepted" usage, or perhaps even a "preferred" one (I <3 the Oxford Comma!), when really what it is is a basic failure of the educational system (including parental responsibility) at large and a corresponding failure of the consumer to stand up for quality content and for having standards in professional fields...and sticking to them.

Languages have rules so that they can perform their basic function; to allow people to communicate with one another. When everyone decides to blithely ignore these rules, communication breaks down. We as humans have spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving our speech and communication capabilities only to throw out our greatest achievements and briefly stagnate, then begin de-evolving (devolution!). IQs across the globe are dropping significantly. When people seem to be getting dumber all around us, that's because they ARE. Unfortunately, our precious internet and ironically named "smart phones" are contributing to this trend in big ways. My husband gave a TEDx talk about this very issue. I tried to post a link, but since I just discovered this site, I'm not allowed. If you want to see, search for Alexander Macris TEDx.

I think it's very interesting, but I will admit to *some* bias.

If you watch the video, you will have the facts behind the alarming trend that has millions of adults reading and praising books that were written for a Young Adult or pre-teen audience. I say kudos to all who are making a stand and fighting back against the general rise of ignorance across the globe. Who decides what is "correct?" WE do. The rules I learned in elementary school have worked very well for many years; there is no need to change them, certainly not to accommodate laziness or to mask ignorance. We need to do a better job of actually educating our kids instead of just continuing to lower the scoring standards for all of our benchmark standardized tests. If we don't let the tests do their job, which is partly to tell us whether our current approach to education is working, then we get kids graduating high school (or equivalent) who are, for all intents and purposes, functionally illiterate. This makes for functionally illiterate (or sub-literate?) adults who go on to get jobs and interact with the public.

Remember, folks, these kids will be running things when we are older. They made this movie already...it's called "Idiocracy" in case you missed it.

Sorry for the rant, but it feels very good to see people discussing these issues! Maybe there is some hope for us humans after all.
 
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Maybe Grammar Nazis need rebranding.

I'm fairly relaxed about such things when it's on a forum, Twitter etc (we all make typos), but if it's published (whether traditionally, independently, or as part of a website's 'official' output) that's a different kettle of monkeys.
 
Years from now, when Alan Yentob asks me how I came up with the title "Grandma Anger and the Kettle of Monkeys", I'm going to keep quiet.
 
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