The Annual: We Think About Commas, So You Don't Have To

Picture credit score: © JANAE WILLIAMS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

The Baseball Prospectus Annual doesn’t use a serial comma. This can be a irritating and counterproductive actuality caught up to now because of comfort and common indifference, very similar to the Electoral School or the existence of the Yankees. I desire the serial (or Oxford) comma for causes that must be self-evident; when you’re an anti-serial comma apologist, you recognize who you’re and what you probably did. It’s Annual season, nevertheless, and that signifies that over the previous few weeks I’ve been methodically rejecting the Google Docs ideas of our quite a few and heroic backreaders who’re all too desirous to insert a serial comma the place I’ve already wistfully excised it. Very like the proper soldier, to succeed in perfection on this course of can solely be discovered within the quiescence of thought—the Annual has its mandates, and I’m merely the hand that varieties them out.

Okay, effectively, besides within the million ways in which the enhancing course of requires fixed, all-consuming thought. It’s well-documented that those that spend quite a lot of time in repetitive actions or thought patterns can have these preoccupations switch into their goals, a phenomenon generally termed the Tetris impact. I’m satisfied I’m quickly to start out experiencing the Feedback CMS impact, and my goals are going to start out wanting like this [spoilers for the 2025 Annual comment of Calvin Faucher to follow].

I do know, I do know. You’ve been proven that the ebook that you’re dutifully preordering at present hyperlink is however a shadow on the wall of the true ebook. Until…the ebook is the true factor and I’m caught studying by candlelight?

A REBUTTAL, by P. Dubuque.

Commas are pretend. Type guides are homes constructed of straw. The idea of readability in writing is a candy little bedtime story we inform our youngsters and our freshmen undergraduate college students, a contemporary morality story supplied to make them behave, linguistically, as advantages the state. The notion that we as writers have in our depths, by means of the applying of our protocol some secret energy to make ourselves understood by the reader, some management over the method, is lovable. Youngsters don’t consider the tree once they decide the cherries. The which means they make is theirs, and theirs alone. We’re powerless. Commas are a easy oratorical machine, slapping one’s palms in opposition to the aspect of the rostrum, and nothing extra.

Did the paragraph above embody a serial comma? In the event you even thought to note, you’ve already failed. To even contemplate grammar when absorbing concepts is a willful abstention from the method of studying, a separation of 1’s self from reality. It’s no higher or completely different than the irony poisoning of a YouTube-obsessed pre-teen, reacting to a response video. Don’t fake that the serial comma is a few last bastion in opposition to the corruption of language, a pure beam of sunshine. Nobody really eats grandma, or thinks Hitler and Stalin are strippers. We aren’t attorneys and these should not wills. Your commas should not so highly effective. You simply wish to impress individuals by being right, and grammar is a method to costume up your concepts in a pleasant clear swimsuit.

And if that’s what you need, go forward. Take pleasure in overdressing. (There isn’t even any sarcasm meant there, not {that a} millennium of grammatical developments may help you discern it anyway. Put on what you wish to put on.) However the Annual just isn’t carrying a swimsuit. It’s carrying a polo and khakis and sitting a dozen rows up within the scouts’ part, tossing out little insights and jokes and chatting away the center innings of each single ballgame in existence, averaged collectively. And that’s why we write the best way we discuss, as a result of studying about baseball ought to really feel like watching baseball, and when individuals watch baseball they use contractions, they’ll let a sentence run on, they usually’ll pause every time within the sentence it feels proper. The ballplayers put on pants that match their shirts. We won’t take this too severely.

A COMMENT, by C. Goldstein

I feel if P. Dubuque had the braveness of his convictions, his paragraph wouldn’t embody any commas in any respect.

,,,

Final thing: Please do contemplate preordering the Annual for your self or somebody you like (or each)! It’s an actual labor of affection, not just for the editors however for the handfuls of proficient consultants who write, remark, and supply suggestions for his or her friends. That is actually not the best atmosphere for print media, and orders in addition to word-of-mouth are invaluable; you’d be hard-pressed to discover a information to the 2025 season imbued with extra collected insights of people that know rather a lot about baseball (and, sadly, commas). That may solely occur because of our readers, whether or not it’s those that have been shopping for for the reason that starting or the newcomers we hope to show into loyalists. This would be the thirtieth version of the ebook and we prefer to suppose it’s getting higher yearly—and readers are likely to agree! We’ll be sending the ebook off to print quickly, and copies may be anticipated in your arms effectively prematurely of the season.

Order the 2025 Baseball Prospectus Annual Right here

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