THE GRAMMAR POLICE
“Detective, this way.” The uniformed officer guided Detective John Gibbons through the back door and toward the kitchen.
“You were the first on the scene?”
The young officer nodded his head.
“Don’t worry son, this won’t always be so hard. The more of these you see, the easier they get. Just try to keep your nerves in check. Deep breaths will help more than you can imagine.”
Once again, the patrolman nodded.
“Through this door, sir.”
Gibbons pushed on the swinging door and was immediately struck by the amount of destruction. There were spent Nerf darts everywhere, perhaps hundreds of them. Some of the projectiles were still stuck to the garments of those unlucky enough to be eating when the shooting started.
The patrolman pointed toward an elderly couple sitting at a table, their plates still neatly positioned in front of them.
“I believe they saw the whole thing. I asked them to stay right there, I knew you would want to talk to them first.”
Gibbons nodded his approval.
“If you haven’t already, start a canvas both east and west of the entrance. Got it?”
“Yes, sir. I am on it.”
Detective Gibbons made his way to the old couple huddled together at a small table near the restrooms. He took a seat across from them.
“Folks, my name is John Gibbons, I am a detective with the Iroquois County Police Department. I am so sorry this happened to you.”
The couple shook their heads. The old man attempted to force a smile.
“My name is Fred Sampson, and this is my wife, Claire.”
“Mrs. Sampson, I know this must have been quite a shock. Tell me, how are you doing?”
“Oh, it was scary, but you don’t have to worry about me, I am doing good.”
Mr. Sampson rolled his eyes as he clasped his wife’s wrist. “Now Claire, you know that you are doing well, not good. Let’s try to remain civilized in the face of all this nonsense.”
“What?”
“Dear, when someone asks you how you are doing, you should respond that you are doing well, not good. If they simply ask how you are, it is fine to say you are good, but if they ask how you are doing, you must respond that you are fine.”
“Oh, good grief. Well then, I am not doing very well at all. How’s that?”
“That is fine.” Mr. Sampson turned toward Detective Gibbons. “How may we help you?”
“Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
“We came here to get the fish dinner, Fred has always loved fish. Haven’t you, dear?”
“Oh yes, I have always loved fish. As I have gotten older, I find I am a little more picky about how it is prepared but, yes, I do indeed love fish. I especially love fish that isn’t too fishy, if you know what I mean.”
“I see, go on.”
“Well, we were about to start dessert…”
“You were starting your dessert, I still had some broccoli to finish.”
“Of course, dear.” She looked the detective directly in the eyes. “I have always been a faster eater than my husband.”
“Oh yes, she has. I have always worried that someday she was going to choke.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. I may eat fast, but you are the one who takes big bites. If one of us is going to choke, it is going to be you.”
“Oh, I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I am the one who took a course on The Heimlich Maneuver.”
“Of course you did, you took it so that you would know how to jab yourself in the tummy when an entire broccoli stock tries to make its way down your gullet.”
The detective pretended to be writing in his notepad. In reality, he was drawing a crude picture of himself with his head in a bear trap. The caption read Misery is temporary. “Please continue.”
“So, I looked up from my Key Lime Pie, and that is when I saw him. He was sitting way over there.” She pointed across the room near the entrance. “He got up…”
“Wait,” her husband said. “How do you know it was a he?”
She let out a little sigh. “Well, I guess I don’t. I just assumed.”
“Now dear, you know what happens when you assume, you make a donkey out of you and a donkey out of me.”
“Fred, I am telling the story, so let me tell it. I am sure you will get a turn.”
“OK,” Detective Gibbons said, “what do you mean you couldn’t tell if it was a male or a female?”
“Hair, lots and lots of hair.”
“Hair?”
“Oh my yes, panda bears have lots of hair.”
“Honey, the word bear is redundant.”
“Huh?”
“It is like a tuna fish sandwich. Tuna is enough, you don’t need to add the word fish.”
The detective looked them both over closely. “Wait, you’re saying that this was a panda who did this to you?”
“Of course.”
“Yes, it was.” They both looked at each other with a sense of disbelief, they couldn’t understand why the detective was questioning their account.
“Well now, isn’t that something? Where exactly was this panda of yours sitting?”
“Over there, way on the other side of the restaurant.”
The detective stood up and gathered himself.
“Can I have your attention, please? My name is Detective Gibbons. How many of you saw a person in a panda suit?”
All the people in the restaurant remained silent.
As Gibbons stood there dumbfounded, a man in a coonskin cap started walking over toward him.
“That twernt no one in a panda suit, that were a true to life panda what done this.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, it was sitting right over yonder. All of a sudden it got up and it started a firin’ some newfangled weapon. I don’t know what it was, the make or nothin’.”
“Show me exactly where this panda was sitting.”
As they moved across the restaurant, a waiter appeared from behind a set of swinging doors. He sheepishly approached the walking men.
“I’m sorry, I have been watching you from the kitchen. I was the panda’s waiter.”
He pointed to a table, and then all three men walked toward it.
“He was sitting right here. I was reluctant to come out and talk to you because I still can’t quite believe what I saw. I have been trying to collect myself in the kitchen. I am still trying to convince myself that I really saw what I think I saw.”
“All right, let me get your statements in turn. You sir, what is your name?”
The waiter tried to spit it out. He finally came up with something that sounded like Robby.
“OK, Robby come with me. If the rest of you will please be patient, we have more officers on the way. I promise you we will get you out of here as soon as we can.”
They found themselves at a well-lit booth in a now empty part of the restaurant.
“Robby, tell me exactly what happened here.”
“OK, this panda walks in. He does not wait to be seated. He comes directly to this table, carefully places his briefcase on the tabletop, and then takes a seat.”
“This is the panda’s briefcase?”
“It sure is.”
“OK, so this is where he was seated…”
“Yes, it is,” Robby said. “He took the seat facing that wall, the one with the restrooms.”
“Go on.”
After he sat down, he took a large manila folder out of his briefcase and placed it right here, on the left side of his table.”
“Where is the folder now?”
“I have no idea.”
The detective stepped back to get an overview of the table. The more he studied it, the more confused he became. He noted that the briefcase was sitting on the edge of the table opposite of where the bear (or the person in a bear suit) was seated. It appeared to be meticulously placed, the side of the case parallel to the edge of the table. Equally as odd, the ends of the case looked like they were the same distance from the opposite table edge.
“Robby, did you touch anything on this table?”
“No, sir.”
“Think, take your time. Are you absolutely sure?”
“The only thing I did was place a drink and a sandwich on the table. After that, I did not touch the table again.”
“OK, good.”
“Are you done with me detective, I really need to sit down.”
“Just one more question and then we are done. Why are you so sure that this was a real panda and not a person in a really good panda suit?”
“The smell. Even its breath smelled like wet bamboo.”
“OK Robby, go take a break. Don’t leave yet, I may need you later.”
“Sure.”
The detective walked back toward the Sampsons. They were having a conversation with the man in the cap. As Gibbons arrived, Mrs. Sampson was squeezing the end of her nose with her left arm.
“Can each of you tell me how you know that this was not just a person in a panda suit?”
As if on cue, Mrs. Sampson started swinging her right arm back and forth over her face.
“Smell,” she said.
“Smell. It smelled like bamboo and dirt.”
“That thing smelled like wet bamboo.”
“It really did stink. It stunk up the whole restaurant.”
“That were one true smellrod.”
“I thought I was in the Papasan section of a Pier One store after a flood,” said Mrs. Sampson.
“Now dear, I think those are made of rattan, not bamboo,” replied Mr. Sampson. He looked over the group, stuck out his chest a little, and said: “It is a fairly common misconception.”
Mrs. Sampson stood still for a few seconds. She was staring off into the distance, her hands on her hips and her lips pursed.
In one graceful motion, Mrs. Sampson turned and started walking back to her table. She motioned for Mr. Sampson to follow her. When they arrived, she picked up the Key Lime Pie and slowly pushed the plate into the face of her husband.
“It is not a Boston Creme Pie, but it is close enough,” she said as she picked up her purse and walked toward the exit.
Mr. Sampson picked up a napkin and started to wipe the pie from his face. “40 years,” he said to no one in particular. “For 40 years, I have been putting up with her.”
The man in the coonskin cap grabbed a handful of napkins and started to help clear the pie from the man’s ears and neck. He grabbed the old man by the shoulders. “Why you put up with that? Why you let her do that to you?”
“Ah, her daddy has money. When I married her, I thought he would be dead in a few years. Here I am all these decades later and he is still dying from the same heart attack.”
“I tell ya bubba, that is rough.”
“Well, if I had known he had the DNA of a Galapagos Tortoise, I would have moved along to the next young damsel rather quickly.”
“Sounds like you still should.”
“Ah, my friend, life sure would be easier if we each had a crystal ball and the instructions on how to use it.”
Detective Gibbons was smiling, touched that these two people who, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t bother to say hello to each other were bonding because they seemed to have something in common, even though he wasn’t quite sure what that something was. As he was thinking about this new Odd Couple, he was struck with a flash of inspiration. At that moment, Detective Gibbons had an idea. Like most of his best ones, it seemed to flash from out of nowhere.
“Excuse me, gentleman,” he said as he quickly walked toward the restaurant’s entrance. He grabbed the arm of the first uniformed officer he saw.
“Look, I need you to call in Carlson. Get him here ASAP.”
“Which Carlson sir, the linguist or the new guy, the one who works on electronic data patterns?”
“My mistake, I didn’t know we had a new guy. Get me Alphonso Carlson, the linguist.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gibbons walked back inside. He took a look at all the patrons being attended to by the county and city police officers who had responded to the initial call of “shots fired.” He got himself a glass of water and then made his way to the shooter’s table. He was about to start his examination of the briefcase when Sergeant Wilson tapped him on the shoulder.
“Detective, I just talked to Carlson.”
“That was quick. Is he on his way?”
“No.”
“No?”
“He’s not coming. He said he has seen dozens of these panda cases, and they all play out the same.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“No. He said you are to look through the panda’s papers. In there you will find your answer.”
Gibbons rubbed his chin. How did Carlson know he had papers?
“Did Carlson happen to say anything else?”
“Yes sir, he did, something a little odd. He said that superfluous commas can be a wonderful, interesting, or dangerous thing.”
Gibbons took a long drink of water. “Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all.”
Gibbons studied the table as he pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket. The briefcase was already open, the shooter must have left it unlatched when the manila folder was removed. Where is that folder? Gibbons glanced under the table and then reached inside the briefcase and pulled the papers out. He carefully placed the contents in a small pile on an adjacent desk.
He started going through the stack. The first page was a flyer celebrating the virtues of the weekly special at Billie’s Taco Emporium. In the upper left corner was a picture of a trout (or is that a salmon?) on a unicycle. Through an oversized megaphone, he was extolling the virtues of their “Fishy McFish Face Tacos.” It took only one more piece of paper for the detective to find what he was looking for. He found a scanned page from what appeared to be an encyclopedia or an old dictionary. This is what was circled in red ink:
PANDA – Large mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.
Gibbons shook his head and tried his best to suppress a smile. It was still early, his Saturday night hadn’t been completely ruined. He decided he was going to call his wife and ask her if she was up for a late dinner and an even later movie.
*****
Do you know any members of The Grammar Police? If you look at a person, their membership is not apparent, they are all undercover. None of them wear Grammar Squad badges or walk around sporting bandoleers filled with red ink pens.
I am not a member. Never have been, never will be. I view membership as the equivalent of an old man sitting on his front porch yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. The problem is, no matter what you do, the trespasser’s ranks grow exponentially while the size of the lawn stays the same. It is not a battle worth fighting.
The fact is language changes in ways that can not be predicted. New words pop into existence, old ones go away or get repurposed, and meanings and usage are constantly in a state of flux. Simply stated: languages evolve. And as you might have guessed, the digital age that we find ourselves living in has rapidly accelerated the rate of change. Have you happened to look at any text exchanges between teenagers recently? Is that even English? Apparently, it is, the kids seem to have no problem understanding each other.
I always shake my head when I hear someone say they are going to start a campaign to get people to use proper grammar in their emails and texts (yes, it does come up from time to time). That ship has disappeared over the horizon. I guess you can start dog paddling if you want, but I guarantee you Michael Phelps has no chance, how good do you really think your odds are?
As you might have guessed, this essay is about commas, those confusing little squiggles that give pause to most writers. Should I put one here? Does that comma belong there? Does this sentence require a comma, or is a (Gasp!) semicolon more appropriate?
Why commas? What is so important about them? Well, I think the poor folks who were trying to eat a quiet dinner would agree that a misplaced comma can create some problems.
They needed this:
PANDA – Large mammal native to China. Eats shoots and leaves.
They got this:
PANDA – Large mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.
It is a small difference that totally changes the meaning of the sentence. Sure, you might be thinking, it is a convenient prop if you are looking to tell an elaborate story about a fictional panda, but do commas really play that important a role here, in the real world? For better or worse, they certainly do. Here are two examples.
Do you own a gun? Do you have an opinion on our Second Amendment right to bear arms? (Note that I passed up the opportunity for a cheap joke about “arming bears.” It is hurting me inside, but I am going to let it go and move on.) Lots of legal scholars certainly do. Their arguments, though, are based on a single comma within the text of the amendment itself. Some believe that it changes the meaning of the following important sentence, others not so much.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Numerous lawsuits have been filed based on this interesting comma, the one highlighted between “State” and “the”. In fact, if you hear of a Second Amendment lawsuit being filed, there is an excellent chance the lawyers will be arguing about that single comma. One of my old professors once told me that language was never meant for communication. The older I get, the more I realize what he was talking about.
This leads me to an important point, the purpose of punctuation itself. It is there to help us clarify our intentions. The things we write are of little value if our anticipated audience has difficulty interpreting our intended message. Think about this: Have you ever received a message (probably a text) that did nothing more than confuse you? I know I have. I have gotten texts that leave me struggling as I tried to figure out the intended meaning. On more than one occasion, I have given up and texted back a series of question marks. Language, and the grammatical rules that go along with it, does us no good if it is not common to both the sender and the receiver. This might be one reason the younger generation has so radically changed the English language through texting. If their parents can not decipher the messages, all the better. For the kids, change is good, rapid change is better.
There is one particular type of comma that has created lots of debate (yes, some people sit around and fight about stuff like this). That would be the serial comma, aka the Harvard comma or the Oxford comma. Consider the following sentence:
I bought Propel, Diet Dr Pepper, Diet Coke and some beer.
Now this one:
I bought Propel, Diet Dr Pepper, Diet Coke, and some beer.
Do you see the difference between the two sentences? That little squiggle between “Coke and “and” is the serial comma. People tend to have strong opinions about whether or not to use them. Serious advocates, armed with grammatical rules and historical precedent, can be found on either side.
The questionable comma from the Second Amendment may or may not be a serial comma, hence the confusion. Most people view the inclusion of a serial comma as a stylistic choice. I think we all now know that the issue runs a little deeper than that.
At some point in my education, I was given a sheet of paper by a thesis adviser. It listed a few common grammatical mistakes, ones we were to avoid at all costs. It also stated that we were never, ever, under any circumstances, to use any type of qualifier for the word unique. Unique meant unique, not “mostly” unique or “pretty” unique. The last thing on the list was an explanation of The Harvard Comma with a list of reasons why we were always to use them. The handout, oddly enough, did not mention the Second Amendment.
Now that we have a little more experience with serial commas, we can move on to the next point. The second example of a comma causing big trouble involves a lawsuit filed by a group of disgruntled truckers in Maine. Take a close look at the following text, a little snippet taken from the Maine law that describes what type of work does not allow for overtime pay.
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.
The drivers won their suit because there was no serial comma between “packing for shipment” and “or distribution of.” The drivers did the distribution, but they did not do the packing. The judge found that the law, as written, was ambiguous. I don’t know much about judicial decisions or The United States Court Of Appeals for the First Circuit, but I submit the first sentence in the decision, written by Judge David J. Barron, is an instant classic. Barron wrote: For want of a comma, we have this case.
Barron goes on to explain that if a serial comma would have been placed after “shipment,” the law would have been clear. I must admit that the distinction is subtle, but the drivers won their case because they didn’t pack anything, all they did was distribute. As a fan of the mighty serial comma (known to me as The Harvard Comma (all caps please)), I am going to take a little time to bask in its glory. I have long argued that by using it, writers can lessen the risk of being ambiguous.
This essay is near the end, I have introduced a couple interesting ideas about commas, and I find myself ready for a well-earned pause before I attempt to tie everything together. I just took a long drink from one of those Diet Dr. Peppers I mentioned earlier. That did the trick, just one or two more small details, and then we are done.
Do you think that the serial comma is useful? Are you now an advocate for its use? I know people who insist they always be used and others who loathe their appearance in printed text. Do you think we will ever come together and declare a standard for the use or abandonment of the serial comma? I doubt it. Even if the proper grammatical authorities (there really are such people) offer a proclamation of standardization, I doubt it will be followed. The folks on the other side will not go down easy. They will fight, fight, fight, and fight some more ( :-) ).
I will leave you with one final thought. Do you have an opinion of Mr. Sampson, the old guy from the restaurant? Is he the kind of person you would want to hang around with? I think I would rather sit home alone than hang out with that guy. As for his wife, what do you think poor Mrs. Sampson did for a living? I am not quite sure, but I can guarantee you it did not involve the written word. If it had, Mr. Sampson never would have made it to retirement.
NOTES:
The Maine court case can be found here: United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, O’Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, case number No. 16-1901.
The panda joke has been around a long time but was popularized by a tiny British grammar book that became a bestseller. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss is a fantastic book. It is interesting to read through the differences in our grammar and that of British English. It is one of my favorites.
