new post: commas gone wild

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language.  Go to www.uiuc.edu/goto/ 
weboflanguage.     Click on "Commas gone wild":

It’s hard to imagine commas in the news, but that’s exactly what’s  
been happening.  Let’s call the first story, “The Comma goes to  
War.”  In September, President George Bush said on CNN that “when the  
final history is written on Iraq, it will look just like a  
comma.” ... Let’s call the second story “The Case of the $2 Million  
Comma.” While the American president was off parsing the Middle East,  
Canadian regulators ruled that a comma in a contract between two  
communications giants was going to cost one of them more that $2.13  
million.  ... Let’s call the third story, “Punctuating Pandas.”   
Commas have been in the news ever since Lynn Truss published her  
surprise punctuation best-seller, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. ....





Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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