Puncuation is Everything!

punctuation.jpg
An english professor wrote the words:
“A woman without her man is nothing”
on the chalk board ans asked his students to punctuate it correctly.
All of the males in the class wrote:
“A Woman, without her man, is nothing.”
All the females in the class wrote:
“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”
Punctuation is powerful.

via bits & pieces



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    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    Ha.

    The female version has a grammatical error. There shouldn’t be a comma after ‘her’. People often put commas where they want the reader to pause and by people I of course mean women (though technically they’re more things than people).

    Aristoi

    Sorry Magnus, but you’re wrong. There is no grammatical error in the female version. The use of that comma is not for pause, but rather to avoid confusion, which is always allowed. One might argue the sentence is clunky, but that comma is fine where it is.

    tiki god

    I’m with Aristoi on this one

    phil

    Punctuation is distinct from grammar, anyway.

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    I’m 100% certain the comma is wrong.

    Bearing in mind I’ve seen this before as a part of a demonstration on bad grammar (and punctuation! lol) during a graduate seminar. Sorry Aristoi but that’s not to avoid confusion. There is no confusion. It’s a sentence that doesn’t warrant a comma and it’s been put in place there for a pause to effect impact.

    verbatim

    Doesn’t make sense to me because the article “A” at preceeding woman. In the second senence, Man is used as a collective, not an individual. So a single woman wouldn’t work too well…

    rattybad

    College English teacher here: The comma’s correct. If the prepositional phrase begins the sentence, you punctuate after it to show where it ends and the main clause begins. If the main clause comes first, you don’t need a comma before it because the preposition itself is the marker.

    beep beep

    Nope, mAgnUS, I think that comma is needed for confusion or else “her” can be interpreted as a possessive pronoun (as in, “her man”) rather than a 3rd-person singular subject pronoun.

    rattybad

    For instance, that sentence I just wrote begins with “If+phrase+comma”, while “because” isn’t preceded by one because it’s a marker unto itself.

    Female version FTW!

    beep beep

    Argh. I mean, the comma is needed to prevent confusion.
    English is my native language, but strangely I am more proficient in my 2nd language. I had to translate the sentence into my 2nd language to realise that the comma is needed.
    The difference is:
    – Una donna: senza lei, l’uomo è niente.
    – Una donna: senza il suo uomo è niente.

    Kaze

    Haw! I can die happy now. I’ve seen a college English teacher say “FTW!”

    Although I do wonder if in the female version, the colon wouldn’t be better as a semicolon, as if I remember properly a colon was used to list off reaso.. wait… wait, no it’s correct, otherwise the semicolon would bind together two separate fragments to make a compound sentence.

    rattybad

    I also like to quote that “I-D-K, my BFF, Jill?” girl. For the record, colons are used for more than lists and semicolons can also bind complete sentences together to form one longer sentence, often as a fix for a comma splice but also to provide some variation in sentence length among shorter sentences within in a paragraph.

    Kaze

    Your knowledge of the English language makes me wanna hug you.

    =D

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    Must be community college?:P

    The comma is incorrect. This is one of those things that gets passed around. I’m not going to attempt the explanation the rest of you have gone through the trouble to.

    Plus the pluralization error is a given. It should read Women: without them man is nothing. In and of itself the sentence negates the purpose since man is now referring to mankind of which women are a part of. They are nothing without themselves. That I can get on board with! Lesbians. mmmmm

    rattybad

    If it read “Women: without them,man is nothing” then that would be wrong. It should then read “Women, without them, men are nothing.”

    Not community college…Ph.D. level university prof. If you can’t explain it, the reason is likely because you’re basing your idea on a hunch. Additional to the explanation I’ve already made, without a comma there you’ll have problems distinguishing the idea of “without her, [a] man is nothing”—where “her” refers to the aforementioned woman—from a meaning in which “her” becomes an adjective “without her man…” which obviously is a mistake once your eyes get to the “is nothing” (as though you were saying, “without her man [the woman] is nothing.”

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    lol

    reread my comment then “dr”.

    “…the sentence negates the purpose since man is now referring to mankind ”

    Man is now a noun referring to all men (and women as I pointed out).

    No pluralization is necessary. Understand?

    geeze..and all I have is a lousy graduate degree.

    rattybad

    But if it should be plural, why use synecdoche for “man”? If you’re changing “A woman” to “Women” then you should thereby change “man” to men”. Why not go all the way with your point and make it truly plural by saying, “Women: without them, men are nothing”?

    …In which case, the comma would still be necessary.

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    No. I clarified that.

    reread

    rattybad

    I did read your poorly presented “they are nothing without themselves” comment (saying you’ve got a “lousy graduate degree” wasn’t facetious, was it?), though it seems to come out of nowhere, avoids the issue of the comma (which is what this thread was about)—I suppose as a method of misdirection—and makes little sense, particularly because you never say how you come up with “man” *now being a noun meaning “mankind”* which, sure, *can* include women. However, you didn’t actually clarify how “woman” can mean “women” when there’s a qualifier in front of it that clearly makes it singular *only* and therefore differentiates man from woman, which then delineates “man” as referring to males only. If you interpret the singular “a woman” as “women” then you have no need to include women as part of the synecdoche man/mankind, and your argument that women can not exist without themselves doesn’t play out because you’ve turned a meaningful sentence into an absurdity that requires too many suppositional leaps for your interpretation to be correct, which suggests it is nothing more than bullshit—q.v., Occam’s razor: the simplest solution is likely the correct one.

    Aristoi

    I think all I can add to this it is:
    “rattybad FTW!!!lol!!”

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    Bullshit in a pretty skirt is still bullshit “rattybad”

    “particularly because you never say how you come up with “man” *now being a noun meaning “mankind”* which, sure, *can* include women.”

    How I came up with it? I was taking a sentence that was incorrect and in fixing it appropriated man to refer to mankind. In the best interest of the author as we are functioning at this point as editors.

    “However, you didn’t actually clarify how “woman” can mean “women” when there’s a qualifier in front of it that clearly makes it singular *only* and therefore differentiates man from woman, which then delineates “man” as referring to males only.”

    First of all you put a comma there where there shouldn’t be one. You’ll off course say you did it on purpose. You didn’t so don’t bother. Second this so called qualifier is which? Because I didn’t rewrite this as “a women” now did I? I took out the “a” and now we have the proper women in it’s place. So you have no case there either.

    “If you interpret the singular “a woman” as “women” then you have no need to include women as part of the synecdoche man/mankind, and your argument that women can not exist without themselves doesn’t play out because you’ve turned a meaningful sentence into an absurdity that requires too many suppositional leaps for your interpretation to be correct, which suggests it is nothing more than bullshit—q.v., Occam’s razor: the simplest solution is likely the correct one.”

    The initial subject women is made a part of the second subject mankind. Without women mankind is nothing. I made no suppositional leaps beyond what the initial statement required of the reader. The statement is absurd in it’s own right. In your favourable interpretation (the last listed in the first posting) there is equal if not more assumed than in my revised and correct one.

    Keep it as A woman and you have a very important woman. Change it to women and you refer to them as a whole. Mankind if very often referred to as man. It’s not like I made that up.

    I’m sorry my sarcasm regarding my graduate degree was lost. I’m not surprised though as you seem like a very dim individual.

    I hope you don’t feel like too much of a fucking idiot and good luck with your word of the day toilet paper.

    rattybad

    The sentence was not incorrect as it was, so essentially you made a leap in claiming it was without valid reason. That takes care of your ideas about “man” as synecdoche.

    By taking out the “a” in “a woman” and making it women—again, without reason—you’ve essentially made a second mistake here because you wanted to and not because it was called for. By “correcting” what wasn’t wrong in the first place, you’ve shown you were no longer paying attention to anything but your own need to be right about *something* (since you were obviously wrong about the comma in the primary example). Again I refer you to Occam’s razor; you’ve essentially slit your wrists with it.

    Next, you can bait me all you want about a poorly placed comma in my response, but unless you’re completely ignorant—or, I don’t know, 11?—you know that once you hit “Submit Comment” there’s no more comment revising. If you’re not ignorant you also know that mechanical errors are bound to happen. Boo hoo I had a comma error. I make plenty. But, in light of your poor argumentation throughout this thread, and your inability to take constructive criticism from pretty much everyone here, pointing out my small mechanical error only highlights your great ignorance.

    You can reread my previous post if you need to understand how changing “a woman” to its plural negates “man” as meaning “humankind”—I’m kind of laughing at you for not really getting it. But, if you didn’t understand it the first time, you probably won’t if you read it again.

    And you can call me dim but the fact remains that I’m correct. Therefore, calling me dim, especially as regards a matter that is part and parcel of my profession is perhaps the grandest statement of ignorance I’ve seen you make in…weeks…around here—but only because I don’t read your posts every day.

    Go ahead and retort, have the last word (I can’t be more correct than I already am, so why bother with you anymore?), but I’m pretty sure anyone reading this thread, which is far too long, already has the impression that you stuffed your head up your ass a while ago. Pry it out and learn something. For instance, maybe you can reread Aristoi’s comment, which pretty much says it all.

    Sorryyoulost

    A battle of the wits. Who shall win? Rattybad? Or the Anus? Lets watch and find out.

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    The battle is over. He/she tried to argue proper use of a comma while abusing the very same punctuation over and over in the reply and then resorting the the oldest high horse bullshit since the invention of internet based discourse. I mean the sheer volume of punctuation errors in that fucking dumbshit response is clearly indicative of an underdeveloped intellect.

    ‘It’ even goes so far as to try to use open ended sentences and sarcasm.

    All he or she has done is back my side and further prove me right.

    I’d thank you for the hand but it wasn’t needed, asked for, or appreciated.

    The next time you want to play smart you should probably do it with someone who isn’t so far above you. I wouldn’t even let someone like you rim my dog’s asshole you God damned retard.

    rattybad

    A final thought:

    “He/she tried to argue proper use of a comma while abusing the very same punctuation over and over in the reply and then resorting the the oldest high horse bullshit since the invention of internet based discourse.”

    Please explain your own use of “resorting the the…” because I don’t understand the use of “the the” in that sentence and perhaps a genius like yourself can explain its significance.

    Oh I know…saying “the” twice is like making it plural! You can do that ’cause you’re so smart and you like making things plural when they aren’t. And don’t bother explaining it…you didn’t do a good job in the other posts, so why would I expect you to now?

    When you resort to mocking someone’s punctuation, especially when it’s unintentional and done in forum threads, you’re bound to make them yourself, is what I’m saying. How’s it taste, eating your own shit, Magnus? Don’t judge my punctuation when you’ve shown that you don’t know the basic rules yourself.

    And I bet you wouldn’t understand that ad hominem attacks pretty much mean you don’t know how to argue—though there’s plenty enough evidence of poor argumentation skills throughout your posts—but, having said that, and since you brought it up, I’d still bet your dog’s asshole smells like your cock.

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    That’s not punctuation you fucking twat it’s just human error.

    How fucking lame are you?

    Mind coming back after your balls have dropped?

    The human race loses because you continue to live.

    The fact that you pounced on a typo like that so severely and with such homosexual gusto again further backs what I said.

    If my dog’s asshole smelled like my cock I probably wouldn’t be able to stop you from rimming it.

    Now quit using commas wrong and making a fool of yourself, limpdick

    rattybad

    So, “the the” is human error but a misplaced comma isn’t? Wow. You really do understand that you’ve really lost this one, right?

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    Yet again you used a comma wrong. Say it was on purpose and you’re baiting me here. Please. Save yourself.

    Yes “the the” is a human error. The use of the comma and committing to it and defending it is not.

    You understand that you fail right?

    rattybad

    I neither committed to nor defended any of my comma errors. If you reread my post, I said mine was an error and that there was of course no way to go back and fix it, much like your own “the the” which I pointed out to show you the irony of your words. What’s really pathetic, though, is that—because you don’t know how to come off as intelligent or conciliatory when someone has schooled you in proper form and argumentation—you see fit to resort to ad hominem arguments which make you seem childish and ignorant, though that is no surprise, considering that is your modus operandi on these boards. It’s too bad the only talent you seem to have is using the word “rim” in interesting ways, and I genuinely feel bad for you because you come off as uneducated and frustrated, and more than a little foolish, when you try to insult people rather than discuss an issue with them, though to be honest I doubt many people around here get offended by slackjaws who use their dogs’ assholes as a basis for an argument.

    Caio

    The The was an awesome band. My girlfriend still listens to them all the time.

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    It wasn’t the basis for an argument you braindead asshole.

    It was an illustration of how little I think of you. Bravo on your vocab. I bet you’re the most popular person in your grand 11 English class. Unfortunately you used the term ‘schooled’ and that solidifies you in the ranks of the gay and the retarded.

    Your spelling and vocabulary are bored and the knowledge of proper punctuation is near absent which clearly indicates you’re putting way too much effort into trying to combat me (who you have yet to do and will never do).

    I genuinely feel bad for your dog because you never did seem bothered by the suggestion of you eats out a dog’s ass.

    In conclusion it is very clear that you are indeed the uneducated one and you’re overcompensating through this laughable diatribe.

    The very fact that you reached out and used the same backbone for your response as an obese tranny on Jerry Springer and called me “ignorant” proves without a doubt that you’re an idiot who should have kept his or her dogs shit smelling mouth shut.

    I hope this lesson has been valuable to you and in future you know better than to try to play hardass.

    TrAyVon'S GhOSt, nuCca

    before you blow your wad…I didn’t proofread that because…well why would I?

    Eat a dick.

    I’m sorry was that crass?

    Consume a sexual organ, monsieur.

    Sorryyoulost

    This amazing cake of godliness is making me orgasm. Ding ding, round 2!

    tiki god

    I hereby threadjack these comments to mention how amazed I am that this is seriously still going on.

    Continue!

    BatteryLow

    rattybad = 100 vs. mAgnUS BUTT = -1

    rattybad wins.

    tripolar

    Stumbled upon this via “Random Posts” (mainly because mine eye got snagged on a missing ‘t’ in the title) and am ever so pleased I did. It’s wonderfully illustrative of how bold some become with the net of anonymity beneath them. (Not to reopen an old wound, but I admire your restraint, rattybad. Well won.)

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