Tuesday, August 31, 2021

random stuff from the Instapundit comments

Enjoy the memes, but don't mind me as I comment on the language faux pas I see.

Okay, the above tweet looks perfect.

Biden checking the time while the bereaved mourn. Some are calling this his George HW Bush moment, in remembrance of when the elder Bush caught hell for checking his watch during a town-hall debate, seemingly out of touch with the concerns of the hoi polloi.

Nothing to complain about above, either. Wow. I'd normally be knee-deep in textual problems by now. This is remarkable.

Lack of a period could equal sloppiness or denote a "trailing off" of the narrative voice, as is normally done with ellipses....

Hee.

                                       

And above is what the "real Indians" found out when they were disarmed.

All caps, and more like a marquee than a caption. I'll allow the lack of punctuation.

Same deal with the above.

With the above meme, the change in font size is bothersome. I like the meme, though.

The above meme points out the irrational hypocrisies in COVID policy. It also contains some language problems. First sentence: a comma splice after "6'" (the comma should be a semicolon because what follows is an independent clause). In that same sentence is a list whose items are separated by commas ("Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, or any grocery store."). That also means the preceding commas ought to be semicolons acting as "supercommas" when list items contain commas. Oxford comma before "or." Second sentence: an Oxford comma after "riots" would be nice. The final sentence should probably be split into two sentences: "It is only deadly in bars, restaurants, small businesses, and hair salons. It cannot live on your food as long as you get it to go." Note that "cannot" should be one word. A lot of illiterates mess that up. What's so hard about writing "cannot"?

The above pic is just too cool.

I guess the above meme is saying that the abolition of the TSA and the Patriot Act will never happen. At least, I assume that's what it's saying. Or is it saying that we made a hash of leaving Afghanistan, and we'd make a similar hash of trying to abolish the TSA and the Patriot Act? Now I'm confused. Your interpretation is welcome.

Above: comma after "fingertips" because what follows is an independent clause. And there's absolutely no reason to hyphenate "gun crime" unless it's a phrasal adjective, as in "gun-crime legislation." Oxford comma after "global pandemics."

Above: comma after "fat people." This is a simple rule, guys, yet you constantly fail to follow it. Refer to my Commas, Part 1 post. Master just that post, and you'll fix 90% of your comma errors. Stop making me wanna tear my hair out.

Above: vocative comma before "please." I'm also not a fan of writing it as "Covid." It should be "COVID," from the designation "COVID-19." The "CO" apparently stands for "corona"; the "VI" stands for "virus," and the "D" stands for "disease." (reference)

Above: comma before "or if you hated him." Same rules as talked about earlier. The second "sentence" is actually a fragment.

Above: comma splice after "first time." That comma should be a semicolon separating two independent clauses. Same problem with the sentence containing "butt"; the comma should be a semicolon. How apropos, given that the subject of the meme is colons.

Scarily, there are no problems with the above tweet, except for a missing period.

Sean Davis, whoever he is, gets a pass!

Above: my major beef is with the word "trainings," which sounds like Konglish.

Above: lack of punctuation acceptable on a marquee.

The writer means "goods or services."

As I've written before, memes often pain me: while their intended content is often clever, their execution is sloppy because the person writing the meme is a linguistic idiot who trips over his own dick on the way to trying to tell a clever joke. I know some people are annoyed by my attitude: Just laugh and move on, they say. But let me ask you: if you were listening to a stuttering fool who was trying to tell a joke, and who kept stumbling and backtracking to the point where you no longer know what the original story was, would you find the eventual punchline of his joke funny? Execution matters. You can be as witty as you want, but if you fumble with the language, then you just make yourself look stupid. Don't be that guy (or gal).



1 comment:

John Mac said...

Re: TSA and Patriot Act meme, I take it to mean that since we've concluded the "War on Terror" initiated in response to the 9/11 attacks, we also no longer need the agency and law that were enacted to stop terrorists. The threat has been eliminated. Apparently.