Before [Lee] Atwater died, of brain cancer, in 1991, he expressed regret over the “naked cruelty” he had shown to [Michael] Dukakis in making “Willie Horton his running mate.”"No other publication would put a comma after 'died' or 'cancer,'" he explains. "The New Yorker does so because otherwise (or so the thinking goes), the sentence would suggest that Atwater died multiple times and of multiple causes."
Friday, May 25, 2012
ALOTT5MA FRIDAY GRAMMAR RODEO: Ben Yagoda, no stranger to these parts, has been writing a great deal about commas online for the NYT of late. He notes, regarding The New Yorker's "scrupulous, bordering on fetishistic" rules regarding commas, the following example from a Jane Mayer article:
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I refuse to coöperate.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say this is why people in my office can't figure out the appropriate use of commas, but I don't think any of us are big New Yorker readers. I guess it's the public education system's fault.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is not so much the commas being unnecessary as the information being unnecessary. I've never read the Mayer article, but at least in that sentence the date and cause of Atwater's death is nothing but a trivial aside. Get rid of the unnecessary excess and the comma problem goes away.
ReplyDeleteNot really trivial, insofar as it suggests a deathbed conversion rather that something he happened to conclude.
ReplyDeleteWhy does The New Yorker insist on treating its readers like dummies?
ReplyDeleteThe cause and date of his death somehow inform the reader that "Before [Lee] Atwater died" means "On his deathbed"?
ReplyDeleteI think so. You don't just drop of "brain cancer" from out of nowhere.<span> </span>
ReplyDeleteJust in case? It's worth hedging these days, no matter what your target demographic happens to be.
ReplyDelete