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 basic indifference, very like the Electoral School or the existence of the Yankees. I want the serial (or Oxford) comma for causes that ought to be self-evident; when you’re an anti-serial comma apologist, you already know 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 similar to the right 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 sorts them out.

Okay, nicely, besides within the million ways in which the enhancing course of requires fixed, all-consuming thought. It’s well-documented that those that spend lots 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 guide that you’re dutifully preordering at the moment hyperlink is however a shadow on the wall of the actual guide. Until…the guide is the actual factor and I’m caught studying by candlelight?

A REBUTTAL, by P. Dubuque.

Commas are faux. Model guides are homes constructed of straw. The idea of readability in writing is a candy little bedtime story we inform our kids 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, via the applying of our protocol some secret energy to make ourselves understood by the reader, some management over the method, is cute. Youngsters don’t consider the tree once they choose 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 think about grammar when absorbing concepts is a willful abstention from the method of studying, a separation of 1’s self from fact. It’s no higher or completely different than the irony poisoning of a YouTube-obsessed pre-teen, reacting to a response video. Don’t faux that the serial comma is a few ultimate 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 will not be wills. Your commas will not be so highly effective. You simply need to impress individuals by being right, and grammar is a option 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 supposed there, not {that a} millennium of grammatical developments will help you discern it anyway. Put on what you need to put on.) However the Annual 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 speak, 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 each time within the sentence it feels proper. The ballplayers put on pants that match their shirts. We won’t take this too critically.

A COMMENT, by C. Goldstein

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

,,,

Final thing: Please do think about preordering the Annual for your self or somebody you’re keen on (or each)! It’s an actual labor of affection, not just for the editors however for the handfuls of gifted specialists who write, remark, and supply suggestions for his or her friends. That is actually not the simplest surroundings 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 quite a bit about baseball (and, sadly, commas). That may solely occur due to our readers, whether or not it’s those that have been shopping for because the starting or the newcomers we hope to show into loyalists. This would be the thirtieth version of the guide and we prefer to assume it’s getting higher yearly—and readers are inclined to agree! We’ll be sending the guide off to print quickly, and copies might be anticipated in your palms nicely upfront of the season.

Order the 2025 Baseball Prospectus Annual Right here

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