Monday, April 11, 2011

Odd punctuation

I don't much bother with picking at the Vicad these days. It's kinda like stomping on a puppy or maybe beating a dead horse, as they seem so generally debilitated as to offer no satisfaction from little jabs. That notwithstanding, I had to puzzle over this sentence from CC's blog:
As far as I can tell, this is the first time, any big media outlet outside of Victoria has covered this story.

Seems to an assiduous sort that there is a needless comma in that sentence. Problem with blogging is that, save for yourself, you don't have an editor, and some editors need editing.
Usually reliable sources tell me that one of the hospitals has canceled subscriptions for the Vicad, relying instead on the miserable USA Today for papers for their patients. Reliable subscription stats are a little hard to find; the paper claims as readers anyone who walks past a paper rack, but actual subscriptions appear to be below 20K these days. Tsk, tsk.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chicago porridge correspondent here. Well, maybe he inserted that comma, as he, caught his breath. I am still struggling with trying to come up with a firm number on how many major media outlets there are "inside" Victoria.

Edith Ann said...

Once upon a time, when I was in college, I had a most wonderful writing teacher. That was a good thing since I was minoring in English Comp. (I know--too bad I'm not using THAT part of my degree...)

Anywho--I LOVE commas. I have come to believe they are my favorite punctuation mark. I use a lot of them, and I always have a whole bunch left over.

But this writing teacher told me that I did not have to use a comma everytime I took a breath. She said I should quit writing like I talked!

Major media outlets in Victoria--I always love it when the local TV news folks say, "And we brought it to you first!" Really? Who else was going to do it? That OTHER TV conglomerate?

A proofreader would go a long way over there at the Advocate.