Commas Confuse Me | Confessions Of A Grammatically Challenged Blogger

Thank you Graphic Fairy for the image.

I have a confession to make. Commas confuse me, prepositions terrify me and don’t even get me started on this whole “to whom” nonsense.* I’m one of those people that hates being told what to do. Bossy people really annoy me with their recriminations**. They’re even more obnoxious when they’re pointing out all of your grammatical faux-pas*** and shortcomings. “Naughty girl! You forgot a comma in that last sentence!”  “Tsk, tsk, someone forgot their apostrophe! You should be ashamed of yourself. Don’t look at me with those pouty eyes. You should know better.”  “Grammar will bring order into your life. Goodness knows, you could use a little order in your life. Just have a look at the state of your room, young lady.”

Normally, when someone tries to boss me around, I do one of two things: (1) ignore them or (2) do something passive-aggressive like agree to do what they want, but then hack into their computer and delete all the commas, periods, quotation marks and semi-colons from every single one of their Word documents. If they really bug me, then I might even remove all of the comma, period, quotation mark and semi-colon keys from their keyboard. That will teach them. I can only imagine the agony they’ll face when they realize that they can’t add punctuation to their letter to the New York Times deploring the state of written English in modern times. 

When I was in school, I got with the program and dutifully proofread all of my term papers, adding in useless commas as needed. Sometimes, resistance is futile and when the difference between a failing grade and a passing grade is the correct use of punctuation, well then, I play ball. Of course, there's all those secret passive-aggressive things I might quietly do to prove my point to my teachers. “Oops, the erasers disappeared again? How in the world did that ever happen?"

But, here’s the thing. Now, I’m a blog writer and, as far as I know, no one**** is handing out any grades as to the quality of my blog content and adherence to grammatical rules. So, why should I be bothered with all that grammatical mumbo-jumbo? It’s pretty simple – paranoia coupled with a healthy dose of insecurity. Half the time, I just write a blog post, do the most cursory of proof-reading and hit the publish button, grammar be damned. But, then there are the days when I agonize over commas, prepositions and other beastly grammar gremlins because I’m paranoid that someone is going to point out my grammatical errors. I imagine all of my blog readers are of the polite persuasion, so they’re more likely to point out my grammatical errors to their family, friends and cats, rather than sending me an email about it, but they’re pointing them out in any event. That’s when the insecurity sets in. “I’M A TERRIBLE WRITER! WHAT AM I DOING WRITING THIS BLOG?! I REALLY SHOULD CHUCK IN THIS WRITING NONSENSE AND FIX THE JOKER VALVE IN THE TOILET INSTEAD!!”*****

My mom thinks I should write a book. Moms are sweet that way - they think you're the most talented person on the planet. Even more talented than your sister. {This is a test to see if my sister reads this blog post.} Can you imagine me trying to write a book? I would get stuck at the very first sentence. Of course, I could just stick with writing very short sentences that require little in the way of punctuation. “Jane ate cake. Jane ate cookies. Jane ate pie. Jane ate chocolate bars. Jane got sick.”  Reads like a bestseller to me. 

Oh well, I guess I’ll stick with this blogging stuff after all. I really can't think of a better way to procrastinate my to do list. But, can I ask one favor? When you see grammatical errors and you want to point them out to your cat, can you at least say something like, “Poor thing. Yes, she used 'to whom' incorrectly in that last sentence, but she means well. Not everybody can be as smart as you, Mr Cuddlepants.”
 
For those of you who blog, write books or do other creative pursuits, what are you paranoid and insecure about?

Random Notes
  
*Some of the funniest grammar advice ever can be found on The Oatmeal, including this explanation of who vs. whom.  
**I used the word "recrimination" here because it's a fancy-pants kind of word. I figure that when you use fancy-pants words, it helps detract from the grammar involved.
***What is the plural of “faux-pas” by the way? It seems weird to write “faux-pass”, because that sounds like some sort of fake pass as opposed to heaps of mistakes. There should be a law banning the use of foreign words in the English language. Oh, wait, we already tried that with that “freedom fries” thing. Did we all agree that it was now “freedom toast” too, as opposed to French toast?
****By the way, I spent five minutes Googling the use of “no one” in that sentence up there. Should I have used “noone” instead? Or, should I have used “no-one”? It was a tense five minutes on the internet. Seriously, surfing the internet should be fun, not make you want to break out the dark chocolate and red wine. The Grammarist was of no help. But, I did learn that if you live in a different country, there are different rules. Just what we need. More rules. After five minutes of Googling, I didn’t find a clear answer, so I’m going with my gut – no one. As in, “No one likes a Grammar Nazi.”
*****I hate the marine toilet on our boat. Stupid toilet. If I ever win the lottery, the first thing I’m going to do is get a composting toilet. If cats can use a litter box, no reason we can’t either. The second thing I’m going to do is hire a professional proofreader. 

Random Grammar Jokes

• What do you say when you're comforting a Grammar Nazi? They're, their, there.
• What's another name for Santa's elves? Subordinate clauses. 
• The past, the present and the future walked into a bar. It was tense.

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