Blogging grammar questions & pet peeves

[Benton]

Which is the correct usage:

a. The designer brought in a lot of "apples," "oranges," and "bananas."

b. The designer brought in a lot of "apples," "oranges" and "bananas."

c. The designer brought in a lot of "apples", "oranges," and "bananas".

d. The designer brought in a lot of "apples", "oranges" and "bananas".

I usually go with "b," but I think British punctuation rules are a bit different.

Do you have any pet peeves or grammar questions that always bothered you?

[hermione]

Just to make sure, this sentence is just an example of proper use of commas and not content, right?

If that is the case, I think both a and b work. I think.

When writing lists, I sometimes use a comma in the second to last item and sometimes don't depending on how it feels when reading it, and if there are already lots of commas in the sentence, I tend to leave the last one out just so the whole thing doesn't look over comma-filled.

What bothers me a lot is bad spelling and improper use "have" -- for example: "I would of" or "I should of", and apostrophes, especially when used as plurals -- "The dog's are pretty."

[Kathryn]

Originally Posted by Benton

Which is the correct usage:

a. The designer brought in a lot of "apples," "oranges," and "bananas."

b. The designer brought in a lot of "apples," "oranges" and "bananas."

c. The designer brought in a lot of "apples", "oranges," and "bananas".

d. The designer brought in a lot of "apples", "oranges" and "bananas".

I usually go with "b," but I think British punctuation rules are a bit different.

Do you have any pet peeves or grammar questions that always bothered you?

It's like asking "how long is a football field?" It matters whether you're talking U.S., Canadian, Arena league, or futbol football!

Using a comma before the last item in a series (the so-called serial comma) is almost never used in UK English, and is favored by certain style mavens in the United States (especially those oriented toward book publishing) and frowned on by others (notable the AP style guide, which predominates in periodical publishing).

The placement of punctuation is also primarily a UK vs US thing rather than a question of right vs wrong.

Here are three things that do bug me: (1) people who don't know where to use a semicolon; (2) people who get hung up on grammar nonrules (ending sentences with prepositions, for example, or splitting infinitives); and (3) people who overuse scare quotes.

[hermione]

Oh, and people who overgeneralize the "____ and I" thing:

Mary and I went to the park. (okay)

But then,

John brought cookies for Mary and I. (aaargh)

And no matter how you try to explain to them, they keep on insisting that they're right.

In linguistics this is called overgeneralization. When someone (usually a child) learns one concept and applies it to everything. For example: "I readed the book."

Just thought I'd share that in case you were dying to know

[purplefdu]

I was taught a) but tend to use b) if I'm not paying attention as a result of AP style writing for so many years.

I hate the misuse of there/their/they're as well as any type of net slang that people put on pages in droves. A little is ok, enough that I have to translate more than I can read is plain ignorant sounding, even if your audience is teenagers. I also dislike the improper capitalization of titles or subtitles. After grading standardized tests I know it will only get worse not better though.

[rstlne]

Originally Posted by Benton

Do you have any pet peeves or grammar questions that always bothered you?

I find "would of" a bit annoying. That error was once a rarity but lately, I've been seeing it a lot on blogs and message forums.

[hermione]

i also cant stand ppl who text speak 4 email or anything other than texting on phones, u no what i mean? it doesnt take 2 secs more 2 type the real words. i can understand using it 4 saving munny w/ phones but when ur on a computer and u have a perfectly good keyboard?

OK, that was really hard and I don't know if I even did it right.

I don't mind common messenger abbreviations like lol and ttyl, but not capitalizing beginnings of sentences, using "u" for "you", "ur" for "your", "ppl" for "people" really bother me.

Is it just me? Maybe it's because I was a linguistics major.

[khorrell]

Has everyone read Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss? It is a very humorous book about punctuation. In it, she specifically talks about the comma after the second to last item. Apparently, it is called an "Oxford Comma," for reasons I can't remember off the top of my head. I debate every time I write whether to include that darn comma or not!

[mbhunter]

I'm a badge-carrying member of the Grammar Police.

"It's" used as a possessive pronoun bugs me. Its usage should be straightforward; it's not that hard.

Also, it's "free rein," not "free reign."

Redundancies like "ATM machine," "IRA account," and "$1,000 dollars" give me a facial tic.

[GOTO Fashion]

@mbhunter - the redundancies you mentioned are funny. I don't think I'd have noticed them before, but now they are going to bug me, too.

As to the opening question, A and B are grammatically correct in the U.S. I use A because we had an internal policy at my last job that required us to use a serial comma, and because it keeps the structure parallel.

My pet peeves:
Misuse of the apostrophe when making a noun plural or possessive (e.g., "This week's best buy's").

Mistakes in selecting among similar-sounding words (e.g., there, their, and they're). I've even seen professionals with extensive writing experience make these mistakes.