(no subject)

[theweaselking]

I care about proper writing for the same reason Van Halen made that concert rider that demanded a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones all picked out. And sure, to a certain degree, it doesn't matter, just like the color of candies in a bowl doesn't matter. If a student turns in a paper without Oxford commas or with sentences that end in prepositions, yawn, big deal; that's an honest difference of opinion about correctness, not the end of the world. Even if a student turns in a paper that talks about the Hindu's and the Rasta's and creates run-on sentences by using commas where semicolons should be, I'm pretty willing to let that slide as a reflection of a student's writing to a perceived (if not actual) level of correctness.

But when students turn in things that misspell key words repeatedly, include nonsensical spell-check substitutions, and/or have whole sentences that are just garbage, it's like seeing the brown M&Ms: I know they were careless, and it's a safe bet the rest of their paper is going to be equally careless

ladysisyphus explains why spelling and grammar are critical. With Van Halen and Ebonics!

Although I wish to add: The Oxford Comma is always and eternally invariably correct, and knowing failure to use it is abomination punishable by death, or at least a failing mark. The delimiter of a comma-delimited list is a comma. In the fake and obviously-manufactured constructed situations where the comma-delimited comma-delimited-list can be unclear, it is also obviously clear that rewriting the sentence would be better AND that the situation was constructed specifically to create a situtation where comma-delimiting a comma-delimited list might be confusing.

Students who do that get a pummelling.

For the record.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

That one is commonly used to show why a serial comma is desirable. The slight modification I used shows that it isn't always the best usage.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Except "I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand and God" is worse, and your clumsy example is clumsy wording *but* still clear that it is a comma-delimited list delimited by commas.

So, going back to the OP, "it is also obviously clear that rewriting the sentence would be better AND that the situation was constructed specifically to create a situtation where comma-delimiting a comma-delimited list might be confusing."

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Though to be fair if they meant to imply that their mothe was Ayn Rand and God, they would used a semi colon rather than a comma.

Also pluralised "mother".

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Be fair: someone who believed that would consider Ayn Rand and God to be the same person (and thus not pluralise mother), and would also not know how to use a semicolon.