If you thought this post would be about Kama Sutra, the Hindu art of marital pleasure, I guess I’ve misled you into reading another of my diatribes about punctuation, a significantly less scintillating topic. Sorry, but copywriters are all about hooking people with headlines. We just can’t help ourselves, even when we assume the Lotus Position or fetal position, and then fervently meditate, suck our thumbs or both, none of which is a scintillating practice at all. That last sentence apparently sent me into a comma frenzy, which I already regret.
“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.”
— Oscar Wilde
"I can definitely relate to that kind of productivity problem, Oscar baby."
— Malia Kline
Since my beloved AP Stylebook and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style didn’t come out until the 1950s, I’m sure it was tough back when Mr. Wilde wrote Lady Windemere’s Fan, since all he probably had to guide him was this 1838 grammar book by Robert Lowth as uncovered by Grammar Girl.
Whoa! When the second sentence of a grammar text has eight commas, two semicolons, one colon, and the word “hath” twice in one sentence, you know you’re in big trouble, which brings me to something that hath been bothering me lately.
Everybody these days starts emails by saying:
Hi Malia
What happened to the comma (Hi, Malia) that we always used back when people wrote letters and the punctuation rules of direct address applied. Maybe people have started dropping the comma because they think “Hi Malia” is like “Dear John,” even though it’s not. Hi needs a comma because it is an interjection like wow. Dear doesn’t need a comma because it is an adjective modifying John.
What do you think? Is "Hi Oscar" the way I should start my email to Oscar Wilde about commas and changing punctuation styles? Or should we just "Quija board" him and see what he spells out?
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Thanks for reading my ramblings.