Conversation with oliver

Categories: Authoritative Condescension

[I received this e-mail in response to my Editing and Publishing rant, and the guy also makes a reference to my Working in Retail rant.]

To: Ivy
From: oliver
Subj: You made a grammatical error!!

Sorry to point this out, but anyone who writes a thousand-word essay criticizing someone else's grammatical errors must stand criticism themselves. On your complaint "They publish trash!" you write:

"I've actually been told that until I put some love scenes and fighting scenes into my books, I won't see an acceptance letter. My butt, I'll compromise my work! If there's no sex in the story, there simply isn't sex."

The sentence "My butt, I'll compromise my work!" should not have a comma in it. A comma divides a sentence into parts which are then treated individually. The assertion made in the second half of a comma-separated sentence contains a further assertion to the assertion made in the first half. Without a comma, the sentence contains a single assertion. So if you say "My butt" meaning a slang for "No I will not" then "I'll compromise my work" must follow _directly_ after it, to make a single assertion.

Otherwise, the sentence contains two assertions, thereby implying that you will compromise your work. This does matter because I had to parse the sentence several times as it didn't read properly, that was when I realised the mistake.

I hope that you shall correct your error promptly.

PS. On your complaint "Some customers are annoying!" you have "Not that it's their fault, but when people manage to snag me to help them just as I am on my way to the back room for my break" in the category "People and situations that are so irritating that I laugh at them". It should not be there. It is not a complaint about the stupidity of the customers because it is not their fault. Instead it should go in the category "People and situations that REALLY piss me off".


[Wow. If you're really that desperate to find something, anything to correct on my page, it should clue you in that it's really not necessary if you have to dig that deeply to find anything (and then what you find isn't even "a grammatical error"). Wow, what a louse.]

To: oliver
From: Ivy

Sorry to point this out, but anyone who writes a thousand-word essay criticizing someone else's grammatical errors must stand criticism themselves.

Ohh, well you don't sound sorry. :) Rather gleeful, actually.

The sentence "My butt, I'll compromise my work!" should not have a comma in it.

I'm not going to say what you said about commas was wrong (because it isn't), but you also have to understand that commas are one of the most versatile tools in the English language, and inserting a pause or aiding in comprehension are two of its accepted uses. I understand why you might have run into confusion in your own reading of the sentence, thinking the comma indicated a stronger pause than I intended, but for the sort of pause you're implying, I'm thinking a semicolon would be necessary. To break it so definitely into two parts, I mean, unrelated to the extent that the two parts would seem utterly unconnected. The two parts of a sentence divided by commas are a lot more related and dependent upon each other than any parts separated by semicolons, colons, or ending punctuation. Therefore the meaning can be understood.

In any case "My butt I'll" sounds odd without any pause at all; it's just not how I would say the phrase. Call it a stylistic preference. Not to mention that it's a very casual phrase; it's not as if it was an example in an English textbook. You must know that in casual essays people are allowed to write how they speak. So, I venture to say that either way of structuring the sentence could be acceptable. On something as unrestricted and style-dependent as comma usage, there is a lot of leeway.

you have "Not that it's their fault, but when people manage to snag me to help them just as I am on my way to the back room for my break" in the category "People and situations that are so irritating that I laugh at them". It should not be there. It is not a complaint about the stupidity of the customers because it is not their fault. Instead it should go in the category "People and situations that REALLY piss me off".

Hmm . . . I'm not sure what your purpose was in sending me this e-mail, but on this one you kinda stooped pretty low to find something "wrong." The category's title says it can be people or situations that are irritating enough to make me laugh. And now you're telling me I don't feel that way about that situation--how the heck would you know that? There's nothing there that blames the customers, and I emphasized that it wasn't their fault because I didn't want anyone thinking I was making it the customers' fault just because they picked a bad time to ask a question. Here's my reaction: I get permission to take a break, I start walking to the back room, and someone jumps out of nowhere and requests my help, and I am amused at how sometimes it just seems the world is orchestrated to make sure I don't get my lunch break. I might get annoyed that I can't take my break, but the actual interruption of my walk to the back room by a customer who must have some kind of radar is amusing, and that's why I put it in that category. You don't need to recategorize my list for me; I don't mind if you think I made a mistake but I'm not sure I appreciate being told that I out-and-out DID and must change it immediately. It wouldn't have hurt to be a little more tactful about it--your little e-mail came across like "you screwed up and you should know better; I expect it fixed in the morning." But I'll just smile and nod this time. And I appreciate the attempts to help out, even if I ended up finding the advice unnecessary.

~*~*iVY


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