The Oxford Comma, Childhood Education, and Me

The coincidences that I encounter these days are not as profound as they once were.  Now it tends to be more along the lines of repeated references to a film I have yet to see, or some negative coincidence like my some last minute excuse always coming up amongst friends.  A couple of recent, coincidental encounters have compelled me to make something out of a topic of grammatical concern.

I stumbled onto an online discussion recently about the Oxford comma and whether it is or is not grammatically correct, or required.  I later found that another online writer’s personal byline declared him to be “a fan of the Oxford comma,” and having already been given cause to reflect on it, I thought to myself, “Well, hell, me too!”

For those of you who are extremely casual grammarians or who pride yourself on a 1337 ability to avoid the conventions of written English, the Oxford comma is the comma that comes between the penultimate entry in a list and the word “and.”  Nouns, punctuation, and a conjunction make up a list, and there’s an Oxford comma in this sentence.  Some writers use it, some don’t.  Some style guides require it, some reject it.  Speaking quite generally, both its use and its non-use are acceptable.  It seems to me that many people, either because they haven’t thought about it or because they’re naturally committed to one or the other, don’t realize this.

That even goes for teachers of English.  The reason why I know about the controversy over the Oxford comma is that I remember it being a legitimate point of confusion in elementary school.  I’m fairly certain that when it first came up, the teacher of what I’m guessing was my third grade class, told us quite explicitly that there was no comma between the second-to-last and last entries in a list.

I more clearly recall when it came up with a later English teacher, because she didn’t seem to know which was correct, but would not admit to that fact.  She was overseeing an assignment in which students had to add punctuation to an existing sentence, and when she gave the answer she listed the places where each of the commas belonged, paused, and added the Oxford comma to the mix.  Even among a group of nine year-olds, the class was bifurcated on that answer, so that I cheered to myself over my superior understanding, and my neighbor had to correct his paper.

At this point you may be asking what on Earth this has to do with breaking points.  Well, having thus had an opportunity to reflect on my personal relationship with the Oxford comma, I realize that the way I learned about it might represent something that’s essential to the development of an intelligent, independent child.

You see, regardless of what I’ve become, I was the picture of an upstanding, studious child who did with religious devotion what he was told to do by parents and teachers, and always followed the rules.  That contributed to a marvelously successful academic career, which paid off with a sense of pride for most of the time that I was in school but left me with nothing once I no longer had anyone to obey.

Now I seem to have such a contentious, anti-conformist mindset as to give me a rather hard edge, which acts as a social barrier.  Nevertheless, I remember well the child that always did his homework, developed an earnest rapport with authority figures, never snuck out at night or dabbled with drugs or alcohol.  In many ways, I am still the child, even though I have a well-developed and eagerly maintained sense of self.  So I know that if I were to finally be injected into a corporate setting, or otherwise put low in a hierarchy that I’m wont to accept, I will still do what I am told to do at most every turn, and do it with sincere deference.

Knowing the kind of child that I was, I sometimes wonder just how I would fare in the Milgram experiments, which, in the early 1960s, demonstrated how easy it is for ordinary people to do monstrously unethical things when directed to by an authority figure.  My life has been unfortunately short on severe challenges to my own morality.  Mostly, there have just been instances where circumstances casually flirted with a scenario in which I might be called upon to either speak up or stand by as a witness to preventable wrongs.  And I’ve always been afraid of my apparent slowness and caution in responding to such situations.

In a lot of ways, I was quite unlike what one expects in a typical intelligent youth.  My aversion to drugs and alcohol, even to sex, has been lifelong, but psychological studies indicate that a curious willingness to experiment with such things is characteristic of a changeable, and thus intelligent, mind.  The saintly boy scout type might prove to be exceptionally good at reciting the rulebook, but that doesn’t demonstrate any real intellectual curiosity.  Rebellion is supposed to be a natural part of adolescent development, but I never experienced it.  My greatest act of rebellion came at twenty-one when I refused to apply to graduate school.

These sorts of contrasts make me wonder if I really have the firm, capable mind that I was always praised for, or if, instead, I am just a terrifically smooth-running machine.  All those subject areas that I was so good at in my primary and secondary schooling – did I really understand them, or did I just repeat what I was told at the same time that I repeated “don’t talk to strangers,” “don’t smoke,” “don’t skip class,” “don’t talk back”?

My worries about the authenticity of my own intelligence are modestly alleviated, however, by the knowledge that insecurity has been a characteristic of virtually everyone for whose intelligence I have had respect in the past.  Whenever I question my skill at or grasp of something, I take a little bit of comfort in remembering the Dunning-Kruger Effect – the tendency of skilled people to think that everyone else is as good as they while deficient people think everyone else is as bad.

Still, I’m not like the other mentally-capable people I know, and it leaves me with the worry that all along I’ve just been adeptly imitating them, saying the sorts of things they say, following the rules that are supposed to lead to where they are, and generally copying instead of thinking.  After all, the best and the worst of people are the ones who question authority.  The rest are just mediocre.

Of course, what I need to keep in mind is that an essential willingness to question authority doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to do so.  And yet it is necessary to have that willingness, because a constant follower is not one to form his own ideas.  That’s a problem when the ideas that you’re asked to follow are wrong, and it’s equally a problem when you have no firm idea to parrot.  Case in point, the Oxford comma.

I was probably eight years old when I learned how to separate items in written lists.  In retrospect, I take great pride in my reception of that lesson.  More to the point, I take pride in the fact that as a child I was not receptive to that lesson.  The absence of the Oxford comma in third grade English is the first memory that I can dredge up from my spotty personal history of an instance in which I actively, albeit silently, disagreed with a teacher.

I don’t know where I learned that skill so early in life, but I believe that it contributed in magnificent ways to the development of the person writing this today.  A year or so after that first lesson, I defied the prior teacher’s instruction and inserted a comma next to the conjunction, because that’s what made sense to me.  I felt then as I do now:  There’s no sense in excluding the comma from the last item in a list, because the conjunction doesn’t fully separate one noun from another.  There are situations in which you might pair two words as a compound noun linked by a conjunction, such as “salt and pepper,” or “soup or salad.”  If such a compound comes at the end of a list and it’s accepted that the writer omits the Oxford comma, the two nouns will be inappropriately divided from each other.

In a far less analytical way, I was aware of this at eight years old, and even though I wasn’t intellectually prepared to defend my opinion to an old woman in a position of authority, I at least had the fortitude to let the instruction pass through my ears unheeded.  When my later teacher hesitated over the question, I was vindicated, because I knew then that it was a legitimate area of uncertainty, and I was confident that I had resolved it correctly.

Children need the skill to resolve linguistic and explanatory puzzles on their own, if they are to become intelligent beings.  Knowing what I do about myself, I’m almost certain that if I hadn’t displayed that skill at an early age, I would in fact be the intellectual automaton that I sometimes fear I could be.  In light of that, early childhood education cannot be simply a matter of transmitting information; it must encourage children to resolve questions that the teacher has left uncertain, and even to challenge the claims of authority.

In many circles, this is something that’s explicitly rejected.  We often tend to value pure obeisance in our children, discouraging them from questioning until they’re old enough to do so.  That, however, is not education.  The creation of loyal citizens is not the same as the development of clever, critically thinking youths.  The patterns that we establish as children can follow us throughout our lives, and a pattern of accepting things at face value then can make it difficult to pick up the skill of questioning later on.  When it is not deliberately fostered, I don’t know where the impulse to reject false information comes from, but it is enormously valuable to developing minds, and I thank god that I picked it up somewhere.

And I thank god for the Oxford comma.

My Compliments

I make it a point to not read my major local newspaper, The Buffalo News, as it is a terrible publication. I once made the mistake of subscribing to it, which afforded me a complete picture of its editorial quality. Suffice it to say that I’ve seen a typographical error in a sub-heading on the front page. Still, I happened upon a copy of the Friday edition’s events guide, the Gusto yesterday, and I found some amusement with the restaurant reviews. In the “Cheap Eats” column, there was one of those gems of a sentence that reminds me of the entertainment value of bad writing, while also filling me with depression at the thought that there are plenty of people who write poorly and are paid a substantial salary for doing so.

Worse still, I was dismayed to read that the author, Toni Ruberto is also a Gusto editor. Presumably then, her job is not only to avoid writing flawed language, but also to identify and remove flawed language that others fail to notice in their own writing.

Yet, in a review of Christie’s Family Restaurant, Ms. Ruberto writes:

“Hash browns served on a large oval plate, enough for two, were moist with just enough of a crunchy edge that they were flavorful, not burnt.”

I wonder, what possible purpose could she have seen for those last two words, other than to turn her intended praise for this restaurant’s hash browns into a backhanded compliment? There is no reason to add the addendum that your food was not burnt unless you mean to imply that you had expected otherwise. Ruberto is not even contrasting “burnt” with any other quality that would call that to mind. It’s not as though different degrees of the same feature separate being burnt from being flavorful, or even crunchy. It’s an almost complete non-sequiter, and it’s so tactless and lacking in self-awareness as to actually affect the tone of the entire review. In light of it, I get the impression that when Ruberto closes her review by saying “We’ll be back for more,” she’s not saying “I expect their food to continue being good,” but rather “I expect their food to continue to surprise me by not being poorly prepared.”

In honor of Ms. Ruberto and the publication that employs her, I would like to offer the following compliments on their review of Christie’s Family Restaurant:

It was understandable, not written in Swahili.

It used proper punctuation, and the text was not one giant paragraph.

It contained relevant information, and the address of the restaurant was not wrong.

The prices of the dishes were accurate, not given in Mexican pesos.

It was professionally published, not posted by a twelve year old blogger.

The text was printed, but not in white.

The typesetting was not upside-down.

There were five columns, which did not read from right to left.

Toni Ruberto has a job that’s not at the New York Times.

There was not a typo in the sub-heading.

And this is just a small handful of the things that you’ve done right. So I hope you feel proud. Good show, The Buffalo News! I’ll be back for more.

Claire McCaskill: Naive, Pollyannish, and Correct

On Wednesday’s episode of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart ridiculed Senator Claire McCaskill for her comments in a hearing on the financial future of the United States Post Office. She recounted sending letters from college to her family, and lamented the fact that there are no such physical keepsakes arriving at her home from her college-aged children today. She then mused that an advertising campaign promoting the value of physical letters might have a positive impact on the USPS’s revenue stream.

Mere moments after I watched the Daily Show segment on Hulu, I read a post at Jack Marshall’s blog, Ethics Alarms, in which he thoroughly upbraided McCaskill for the same commentary. He concluded his post by saying that her remarks constituted a “level of demonstrated incompetence and stupidity that mandates removal from high office.”

I dare say it’s a little extreme to advocate that someone be removed from office based on having simply expressed an off-the-cuff idea, and one which McCaskill prefaced by acknowledging that it may seem “naïve” and “pollyannish.” Now, of it was foolish of McCaskill to bring it up in that context, and to apparently be just spit-balling ideas during an official government hearing. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, though, as far as I know, that’s just the way these things go. There may often be an informal tone in these sorts of hearings, which encourages a free exchange of thoughts. And appropriate or not, that is exactly what McCaskill was engaged in. That is not demonstrated incompetence. She didn’t actively structure a policy around her reflections. She didn’t do anything except share an idea that some people took very seriously and saw as a decidedly bad idea.

I actually disagree with them. I don’t think it’s all that bad an idea. Now, if she thought that effective advertising would completely turn around the Post Office’s revenue problems and that they would all then be able to go on with business as usual, her naiveté is quite incredible. There’s no reason to assume that, though. I see no reason to assume that she meant anything other than that it might help a little, which I think is true.

Jack Marshall’s derision of the idea almost comes across as a tirade against letter-writing, and both he and Jon Stewart seem to be of the opinion that traditional mail is dead, that nothing will revive it, and that technology moves inexorably from one item to the next, leaving the past buried in its wake. That perception is disputed at least in a modest sense by a study that was detailed on NPR some months ago, in which the author claimed that nothing that had ever been produced in the past has since stopped being produced altogether. Of course, that’s far from saying that any older technologies or practices remain commonplace, or rebound, but in my observation some do.

Marshall writes:

"If the Senator’s idea works, maybe we can use the same approach to bring back the use of other obsolete and inferior technologies. Like…typewriters! Didn’t you love that ‘clack-clack-clack-ding!‘ sound? Phonographs! And telegrams! Ah, there was such a thrill when you got one of those!"

I found that passage amusing to read, considering that I am twenty-six years old and I own two typewriters and a record player, both of which I use. The record player is a Crosley model that was manufactured in recent years. I do as a matter of fact like the clack-clack-clack-ding of typewriters. As a writer, I find that it reassures me of my progress and helps me to establish a rhythm. I also appreciate the concept of having a physical concept of my work without having to go through the further process of printing it out. That is essentially the same reason why I prefer personal correspondence in the form of handwritten letters, rather than e-mail. I know for a fact that I am not the only one in my age bracket who feels this way. When I was in college, e-mail was already quite dominant, but I had several friends with whom I exchanged letters, because we thought it preferable to have a space of time between correspondences, and to be able to open physical envelopes, which imbued the messages with greater significance.

Marshall seems to not realize, or to ignore the fact that some of the technologies he refers to as obsolete and inferior have remained current even in the presence of domination from their competitors. I was able to buy a new record player a few years ago because they are still marketed to some segments of the population. Naturally, some of these are seniors with disposable retirement income, who still have vinyl records from their earlier years and would like to hold onto them, and perhaps convert them to mp3 and CD formats. However, newly pressed vinyl has seen a significant resurgence in recent years, because advertising and word-of-mouth has informed people that it actually provides a better sound quality than the alternatives. It is a niche market, but audiophiles and music snobs are now willing to spend more on a high-quality vinyl record than a CD. For my part, I am happy to purchase used records for one dollar at the local thrift store because as long as they are well-preserved, the overall sound quality remains superior, and I also like the hands-on aspect of it, the fact that the need to turn over the record at the halfway point encourages you to remain engaged with the music, and to listen actively.

I have noticed the same sort of resurgence with typewriters, which I began to see being sold new in office supply stores starting a couple of years ago. I expect the reason is that people have realized – or manufacturers have realized they can try to convince people – that they are preferable in some professional contexts for fundamentally the same reason that I prefer them when writing fiction. That is, they provide an immediate physical copy, a fact that probably benefits businesses when they would rather not waste time by scanning, modifying, and printing existing forms and documents.

So why not actually promote the USPS as a means of personal communication? It’s not unheard of. The Swedish post office embarked on a creative ad campaign in the Christmas 2009 season, and from what little I know it was rather effective. It seems to me that the mistake that the government and the Post Office has been consistently making is that they have been going about business as usual, failing to make necessary structural changes to their operations in order to reduce costs, and also failing to implement any strategies in order to increase revenue. Both are necessary to save the institution, and despite what Jon Stewart or Jack Marshall would have us believe, it’s not all that ridiculous to think that people can be guided towards choosing something in spite of its not being on the cutting edge.

To my mind, this entire subject speaks to something deeper about modern American perceptions of marketing. That is, we seem not to have any such perception. In the context of constant information and ongoing consumer profiling, people who are in the business of selling things to other people have gotten so caught up in the “people” and “things” elements of that equation that they’ve utterly forgetting about the “selling” part.

In season four of Mad Men, there is a scene in which Don Draper clashes with an expert brought in to do market research on how to sell skin cream to women. Her interviews find support the notion that the traditional angle is the only angle: convince them that using it will help them to get married. Draper had been pushing for another interpretation, no doubt guided in part by his own resistance to the confining set of options offered by society, and the woman insists that there doesn’t seem to be a new approach to be had. Draper stands his ground by saying that of course no such approach would come out in the market research. Neither the product manufacturer nor the potential customers would know what they’re looking for until someone tells them. That’s what makes it new.

Was marketing really like that once upon a time? Is there any creative appeal left in marketing now? All the sales of products seem to be obtained through algorithms which pick out the sort of people whose consumption patterns demonstrate a proclivity for consuming those products. We seem to feel that all we need to do is isolate the people who want something, and then tell them to obtain it. But good advertising is capable of targeting people who don’t yet want something and convincing them that they do. Great marketing can convince them that they want it even though it’s different from what they’ve gotten accustomed to, even though it seems, at first blush, to be inferior, even though it’s old. But that idea is apparently so passé that Jon Stewart and Jack Marshall find it to be laughably indefensible.

Small-Minded Press

Last weekend, I attended the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. While I took an interest in a handful of the vendors that were present, for the most part I came away with quite negative thoughts about the driving forces behind most of the projects represented.

First and foremost, after about five minutes of looking, I had the distinct feeling that, more than anything else, affluence drives all of this. I don't have a great deal of respect for those sorts of small presses, which are clearly not struggling to stay financially afloat, but are led by people who can pour money into them without ever needing to break even. They may love what they're doing, but I think the event was advertised to the public as a showcase for industry professionals. Instead, it was comprised almost entirely of people who are able to maintain their presses and publications purely as hobbies, because they have neither the need nor the ambition to be demonstrably successful with it.

Obviously, my class-consciousness bears upon my perspective on the event. It would be one thing had I observed collective ventures supported by many individuals each with modest means, spurred on by an earnest belief in the literary alternative they're providing. But in fact, the vast majority of tables were manned by individuals with professionally bound copies of their own books and magazines, and I must say that it just doesn't seem fair that they be able to disseminate their works on account of their affluence, while seriously committed artists elsewhere struggle to make ends meet.

And I find that impulse among the small press owners frustrating for this other reason: Why wouldn't you, if you don't actually have to sell your work in order to make a living, devote yourself to developing a presence in large presses, so that you can be more visible as an artist? I can't avoid coming to the same conclusion about this that I've come to about other artists and groups in the past. In particular, it reminds me of criticisms I've made of the large but stubbornly amateur audio drama community on the internet. It seems to me that there are a great many artists who insist on remain amateur, and won't entertain the ideas of either profit or editorial oversight, precisely because being professional opens them up to a great deal of criticism.

There was one table at the book fair that encapsulated the problem of small presses better than any other. I was there with a friend, and as we were taking a second pass of the exhibition space, we both paused in front of a table displaying a pile of chapbooks and a large white board with a network of multicolored scrawls, seemingly designed by a schizophrenic, under the heading "The 21st Century Dude." I'm happy to ignore things that I don't think are worth trying to understand, but my friend was practically transfixed by the bizarreness of this thing, and quietly commented to me that she wanted to ask the person behind the table what it meant, but was concerned about offending her. I said that the woman was there to talk about what she was selling, and that my friend should just ask her to explain her project. Somewhat crudely rendering my advice, she timidly walked up to the table and, pointing squarely at the white board, asked a more direct question. "Hi, um, could you tell me... What is this?"

I don't think the vendor's answer could be considered an answer, and it certainly didn't seem to register the obvious confusion. "Well, this is a chart of all the categories that we think make up the twenty-first century dude. And it looks at their different combinations, and how they interact. And, I mean, they've all existed before, but..."

I came up alongside my friend and picked up a chapbook to peruse the table of contents. "Okay," I said to the vendor, a tall bespectacled woman of about thirty, "So could you tell me, what is the focus of your publication?"

"What is the focus of the publication," she repeated flatly, as if not comprehending the words, and then picked up one of the books herself, as if ready to search for the answer. "Well, it's about the twenty-first century dude - trying to define it, what it is, what he believes, what it means."

"Okay," I said as I set down the book. The most forgiving thought that I could entertain was that maybe this was some kind of hipster irony that I was simply not cool enough to understand. I gave a look to my friend, and walked away with her, thoroughly convinced that this was just not going to make any sense to me. When we got a safe distance away, we laughed our asses off.

What really struck me about that table was how off-guard the woman was when I just asked her to explain what she was publishing. Honestly, she reacted as if she had never been asked that question before, and never even anticipated that it might come up. And that's almost understandable. These small presses, and other creative ventures like them, are used to dealing with their friends, or repeat customers, or with people who already think the way they do. Most of them, thus, are unprepared for the culture shock of thrusting themselves into a public event where they need to reach out to people not already in their niche. Consequently, virtually none of the vendors at this event had any marketing sense.

Apart from general curiosity, I had gone to the event in the hopes of doing some networking for both my creative and business writing. I really should have passed my card out to everyone I found interesting, but I had the same problem as my friend did in asking the vendor to explain her white board. How do I approach people who need help marketing without insulting them? "Hey, your table sucks because I have no idea what you're selling. You look like you could use my help." Besides, is it worth offering my services in the fields of marketing and advertising to people who are specifically not interested in professional success anyway?

It's really a shame. There were a few publications, presses, and artisans represented there who seemed to have terrific talent and focus, and those ones I would love to help move in a more professional direction. But I don't think they'd be interested. I've seen it before, and it always makes me feel sad and, as a person with earnest creative aspirations, lonely. I want the people around me to take themselves as seriously as I take myself, and hell, as serious as I take them. I've known many people whose multi-faceted talents fill me with jealousy, but who just aren't committed to utilizing them. Can our own skills and overly delicate aspirations drive us to a breaking point?

I'd love to start seeing that. I want the people I respect to start looking around at the overwhelming volumes of people all trying to express themselves creatively, and decided it's time to snap themselves away from the crowd. It's worth it to be professional, because that's how you'll have an influence outside of your own circle. It's worth it to open yourself up to criticism, because that's how you'll learn what works and what doesn't, and that's how you'll learn to be better. As a writer myself, that's what I want. Am I alone in that?