Month: October 2007

Commas change third person to first person.

Commas, Common English Blunders

I instant-messaged someone whom I’ll call Kathy while talking with her in a conference call.

I wrote, “I asked, Kathy, about the session sheets because …”

She replied, “…who did you send this to?”

After some confusing back-and-forth, I realized that Kathy did not see the commas in what I initially wrote.

She thought that I wrote, “I asked Kathy about the session sheets because …” That would have been a third-person reference to Kathy. She thought that I had instant-messaged someone else with “I asked Kathy about the session sheets because …” before instant-messaging the same thing to her.

Instead, because I wrote, “I asked, Kathy, about the session sheets because …”, I was referring to her in the first person. I was trying to make my instant message more personal by pausing (with commas) to include her name.

Lessons:
1. Commas can change a third-person reference to a first-person reference.
2. Don’t assume that readers will see your commas, especially in an instant-messaging situation.
3. Don’t assume that a reader who sees your commas will know that these are equivalent to pauses in the spoken version of what you write. If a reader can’t “hear” the pauses implied by the commas, then the reader will read a first-person reference as a third-person reference.

“i.e.” versus “e.g.”

Abbreviations, Common English Blunders, Foreign Languages

I often see mistakes with “i.e.” and “e.g.” when writers are trying to give examples or trying to elaborate.

The term “i.e.” is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase “id est” and means “that is” in English.

The term “e.g.” is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase “exempli gratia” and means “for the sake of example” (more simply, “for example”) in English.

One should follow either abbreviation immediately by a comma and a space before one gives the elaboration (in the case of “i.e.”) or the example (in the case of “e.g.”).

Examples:

“The mountain summit (i.e., the peak of the mountain) ….”

“Felines (e.g., lions, tigers, and cats) ….”

“Premise Installer”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns

I have seen this repeatedly in telco documents.

Problem:
The noun “premise” does not refer to location.

Explanation:
Dictionary.com has the best explanation about why we call a single building the premises and NOT the premise.

Here is a simple way to remember which noun to use when: premise is a logic term, whereas premises is usually a location term (unless you’re talking about a multiple of premise).

I also believe that use of “premise” instead of “premises” helps to prove my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say “premise” (two syllables) than to say “premises” (three syllables).

Solution:
“Premises Installer”