Comma Sense

In a world sinking into subliteracy, I have long been a language fiend. My dad is a by-the-book grammarian who has a thing for direct objects, insisting they pair up properly with their subjects like bread with butter. Growing up, when we answered the phone, we were barred from saying “That’s me.” We were required to say “It is I.”

Rigid grammatical correctness is not catnip to guys, let me tell you. I read recently that someone was “out of sink with her peer group.” I relate. Is it any wonder I was never invited to the prom? In high school they called me Funk & Wagnall. By any name, it was kryptonite. Yet I’m not as far gone as I could be. I have a number of persistent grammatical blind spots—distinctions I just can’t grasp and levels of crankiness that even I won’t abide by.

In fairness, English is rough going. “Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled,” says Bill Bryson, author of The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way.

Apostrophes may be the No. 1 bane. Lynne Truss goes apoplectic withapostrophe apostasy. She’s the author of the best-selling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, which bemoans the current lackadaisical state of punctuation and grammar. She refers to apostrophes as those “floating comma things.” A sign for a store at Southpointe Commons strip mall generates apostrophe agony. It says “Its Your Party.”

Grammar is an odd animal: full of rigid orthodoxy, yet subject to both fashion and democracy. To sort out the status of Hoosier grammar and punctuation, I empaneled an assemblage of local mavens, sticklers, and obsessives. Foremost among my experts was David Noble, 73, Indy’s grammar guru, our local laureate of language. Ichabod Crane–like, the northeastsider is a part-time professor at University of Indianapolis and former editorial director at local publishers Que Corporation and Jist. Straightaway, Noble tries to lead me down the garden path by asking about the correct uses of its, it’s, and its’. I don’t fall for his feint. You never use the last version; it’s a bastard. As Truss laments, most Brits—and evidently most Hoosiers, as you will soon see—do not know their apostrophes from their elbows.

At 31, Katherine Rowland is a sweet-hearted curmudgeon. She’s knownat the Indianapolis–Marion County Public Library, where she works, as the go-to gal for grammatical groaners.“People do judge you when it comes to English usage,” she observes. “You’ll be scorned for either extreme: whether you’re really precise with grammar or terrible at it.”

Signage is fertile ground for purists, and Rowland says her southside Kroger offends regularly. “It tends to be when they’re advertising a special. It drives me insane: ‘Egg’s $2.39/dozen’; ‘apple’s, $.99/pound.’” That apostrophe is neededonly when somebody’s possessing something; if we’re talking about multiples of apples or eggs, toss the blasted thing in the compost heap. Elsewhere, welcome signs on houses (“The Arnold’s,” for instance) really throttle Rowland. “Something about collective last names seems to really throw people,” she says. I sympathize with the violators because I know they feel torn between the pluraland the possessive. Likewise with the sign for Soldiers Home Road in West Lafayette, which makes Rowland peevish: “It irritates me that the government has mandated the removal of apostrophes in so many place names.” Must be part of Governor Daniels’ (or is it Daniels’s?) cost-cutting plan. A recent billboard on I-65 featured the image of four bankersand the slogan “Good things come in four’s!” Rowland was beside herself with that apostrophe catastrophe.

After 40 years at The Indianapolis Star, Ellen McKinney is the doyenne of copy editors in the city. She offers an example to help me understand apostrophes, except it’s beyond me: “I earnedfour A’s because I knew my ABCs.” Therules seem maddeningly arbitrary. Ac-cording to The Associated Press Stylebook: Single letters get an apostrophe; multiples don’t. Truss wants the Queen to create the office of Apostropher Royal to control the quality and distribution of apostrophes. Thus inspired, I propose a Hoosier Apostropher’s League—or would that be Hoosier Apostrophers’ League?

Moving along to commas. “People think you put a comma where you pause,” Noble says. (Gee, that’s what I think, too.) “That’s not a rationale,” he says. “If you’ve just run a 100-yard dash, or have asthma, you’ll have wall-to-wall commas.”