My roommate Gabby was the one to open my eyes — rather, my ears — to the hilarity of the band’s music. After watching a few of the group’s most popular music videos on YouTube, I clicked on one whose title caught my grammar-nerd eye: “Semicolon.” I was excited to listen to what the band had to say about the punctuation mark many people misused so often.

Oh, I was not disappointed.

At first, I was very confused because I couldn’t really make sense of what the band was trying to tell me. Then came the line about Oxnard. Then I got it: The band was satirically misusing the semicolon.

The video’s lyrics satirically read, “I’ll take you where you’ve never been; Oxnard.” First of all, you should use a colon in that sentence, not a semicolon. Second, I’ve been to Oxnard many times — the city neighbors my hometown, Camarillo.

So the band members get F’s in their grammar class (which they deserve), but we shouldn’t have to. What is the correct way to use a semicolon?

One correct use of the semicolon is connecting two independent clauses. For example: Oxnard is famous for its strawberries; it even hosts a strawberry festival annually.

Another use is separating three or more items in a list when one or more of those items contain a comma: We can eat strawberry pizza (yes, this is a thing), chocolate-dipped strawberries and strawberry pie; drink strawberry margaritas; and go on a jog to burn off all those calories.

Who am I kidding? I wouldn’t go on that jog — I’d rather sit here, watch funny YouTube videos and tell you not to use semicolons like the Lonely Island does in this song if you want to be grammatically correct. But then again, why wouldn’t you want to be grammatically correct?

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In the same vein, it’s been said that “nobody notices that stuff” — with “stuff” referring to punctuation, capitalization and other supposedly trivial matters. A certain former Daily Cal sports editor even told me that it’s “hard to get people excited about commas.”

Wrong. Wrong on all three counts. I give many, um … fudge muffins about Oxford commas — and all other commas, for that matter — and I certainly notice and am excited by them. While the Oxford comma debate in particular has been beaten to death, there are certainly other instances in which, to borrow from a quote from earlier coverage of the Fed chair nomination saga, “the placement of a comma can move the markets.” OK, perhaps that quote was used entirely out of context, and perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration, but you can see where I’m going with this.

Commas may not (typically) alter markets, but they certainly have the capacity to alter meaning. With that said, I’d like to share a few examples:

Sentence No. 1: “The cats, who ate the pizza, climbed the flowerpot.”
Meaning: All the cats in question climbed the flowerpot. They also happened to eat the pizza.

Sentence No. 2: “The cats who ate the pizza climbed the flowerpot.”
Meaning: Only the pizza-eating cats climbed the flowerpot.

So why do these two strikingly similar sentences have such different meanings? Well, the secret is in the commas. In the first sentence, “who ate the pizza” is enclosed in commas because it is nonessential. It can be omitted from the sentence without changing its premise — what I am saying is that all the cats in this scenario climbed the flowerpot, and the pizza is irrelevant.

In the second sentence, in contrast, “who ate the pizza” is not enclosed in commas, indicating that it is essential and cannot be removed without changing the sentence’s meaning. In this case, I am saying that only a specific subset of cats — those who ate the pizza — climbed the flowerpot. Removing that portion of the sentence, then, creates ambiguity with regard to which cats did the climbing. (On a side note, cats should not be eating pizza, but that’s another story.)

If you’re still confused — or appalled by newly discovered feline dietary habits — let’s consider another example.

Sentence No. 1: “My friend, Sophie, is a copy editor.”
Sentence No. 2: “My friend Sophie is a copy editor.”

Again, the first sentence includes a nonessential element that can be removed from the sentence without changing its meaning. In the second sentence, the commas are omitted because, seeing as I have more than one friend, the name is essential in indicating which friend I am referring to. This does, however, have important implications: In the first example, Sophie must be my only friend if we can eliminate her name without introducing any ambiguity. (Admittedly, though, if this were the case, I would not be too disappointed, as Sophie is a perfectly adequate friend.)

In the event that you’re still not convinced commas matter at all, let’s examine the following:

“Stop clubbing, baby seals,” a well-known meme reads, sarcastically depicting cuddly animals on the dance floor in an attempt to promote the importance of grammar. Here, the comma is unwarranted — the intent (presumably) is to promote an entirely different message, which happens to be targeted at animal abusers: “Stop clubbing baby seals.” If you have some sort of moral opposition to young seals frequenting the nightclub scene, however, perhaps the original sentence and its comma will serve your needs — regardless, that comma makes a huge difference.

Finally, a magazine cover error went viral after the headline “Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog” was printed. Note that a corrected version of this sentence would read as follows: “Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking, her family and her dog.” The comma matters here because it separates items in a list.

Congratulations. You and the oh-so-handy comma just saved an innocent family from a terrible fate. And that, if anything, excites me.

The post Essential knowledge appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Daily Cal doesn’t use the Oxford comma. And that goes against just about every fiber of my being.

For the uninitiated, the Oxford or serial comma is the (absolutely necessary) comma before the coordinating conjunction in a series of three or more terms. An example:

No Oxford comma: I interviewed Miley Cyrus, a vocalist and a backup dancer.

Oxford comma: I interviewed Miley Cyrus, a vocalist, and a backup dancer.

Not using the serial comma can lead to confusion: Is Miley both a vocalist and backup dancer? Several hilarious examples of such grammatical mishaps exist, for example, here.

Now, some will tell you that the serial comma is unnecessary in most cases, that sentences such as the one above can be rewritten to avoid confusion and that not using that comma saves space (really?). When I asked the senior editors in the department about it, I felt like I had stepped into the Twilight Zone. With glazed eyes and defeated looks, they responded in chorus, “We follow AP style.” Zombielike, they continued, “The Stylebook says not to use the Oxford comma.” I didn’t push it further, mostly out of a finely honed instinct for self-preservation.

The debate has been raging for generations, and we’re far from a consensus — hell, the Oxford University Press doesn’t even use the Oxford comma anymore. But the point I’m getting at is that despite the hyperboles and zombie jokes, debates such as this one — even in jest — prove that grammar matters and, moreover, that it can be interesting. The way language functions on such a basic level influences meaning — sometimes in ways more subtle than Miley Cyrus.

Then again, just about anything is more subtle than Miley Cyrus.

The post A comma dilemma appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The oft-mistaken “capital” and “capitol” are simple enough to remember but are confused a shocking number of times. “Capitol” refers to the physical building or complex that houses the government — for example, the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers (typically) work to ensure the well-being of the American public, or our beautiful California State Capitol in Sacramento. If you want to refer to the city of Washington, D.C., as the capital of our country, however, you would (as just demonstrated) use “capital.” The capital city of California is Sacramento, but state legislators convene at the Capitol building.

Now that that’s solved, let’s hope our members of Congress can get on with solving that whole shutdown thing.

The post Capitalizing on the government shutdown appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I don’t know why or how or when it happened, but at some point during the last couple of years, this strange science fiction show converted several of my close friends to its die-hard fandom. I wouldn’t mind or really take much notice at all were it not for the fact that, apparently, a fundamental characteristic of a true “Doctor Who” fan is the compulsion to never shut up about it. (I say this, of course, with the utmost respect and affection for my “Whovian” friends. Love you guys.)

The first time I ever heard of the show, it was part of a riveting conversation among acquaintances regarding a topic of paramount importance — celebrity crushes. One guy took center stage, boisterously professing his love for David Tennant (the star Doctor himself) with a passion whose magnitude could be matched only by that of the incomprehension behind the blank stare he received from me in turn.

“Who?” I asked, sadly unaware of the awful pun I was making.

“You don’t know who David Tennant is?!” he sputtered with the few cubic centimeters of air left in his overworked lungs.

“David who?” I repeated with an edge of concern for his physical health. Came his incredulous reply, “Tennant! David Tennant! As in, the tennants of religion!”

Needless to say, after this introduction, “Doctor Who” and I did not get off on the right foot.

In his exasperated frenzy, this poor soul had confused two very different words: tenet and tenant. What he was attempting to reference were the tenets of a religion: its belief system, doctrine or principles. But what he accidentally actually conveyed to me was that somewhere, some religion was renting out its spare bedrooms to people — for how else could it have tenants?

I can forgive this boy his mistake, however, for three reasons. The first is that the only consequence of my misunderstanding and confusion was that, upon my arrival at home, I had to withstand the silent judgment of the Google “Did you mean…” for my inability to correctly ask the search engine to find pictures of this mysterious actor. The second is that I acknowledge that the sheer ardor with which this kid loved David Tennant may just have been enough to render him nearly incapable of coherent thought.

The third reason, however, has always been the most comforting to me, if the least plausible. When I think about (and subsequently balk at) the unbelievable atrocity of confusing two words with such disparate meanings, what most calms me is the idea that perhaps he was not attempting to clarify a last name but, rather, was referencing the “Doctor Who” following as a belief system itself. Perhaps this fandom has come so far as to have self-established as a legitimate religion that enjoys replacing traditional language with terrible Doctor Who-specific puns, thereby explaining the substitution of “Tennant” for “tenet.” Yes, I tell myself in a soothing voice while refusing to acknowledge that I am making absolutely no sense at all — this must be the case.

I know that I may have offended some people here with my wild exaggerations and Whovian blasphemy, but I’d be lying if I said I was sorry. I recognize that it’s possible that from here on out I should be glancing backward, checking for murderous fans behind corners desiring retribution for my heresy, but I don’t really mind — after all, as my friends often tell me, it is always a good idea to be on the lookout for extra shadows anyway.

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And Gretchen Wieners is one smart gal. She understands that you can’t just ask people why they’re white, she knows that cousins and first cousins are the same thing and she will never forget that in girl world, you can only wear jeans or track pants on Fridays.

While she may know the rules of feminism, however, she is definitely not aware of the rules of grammar. We could pass off her mistakes as humor in girl world, but people make these errors on a regular basis in the real world.

We can learn from some of her awful violations of grammar rules.

1. “OK, look, if I was wearing jeans today, I would be sitting over there with the art freaks.”

That may be the case, but Gretchen is not wearing jeans today. Because her idea (of her wearing jeans today) is contrary to fact, she should have used the subjunctive and said, “if I were wearing jeans today …”

2. “Irregardless, ex-boyfriends are just off-limits to friends.”

Sorry, Gretchen: “Irregardless” is not a word. Here is the definition of “regardless,” according to Oxford: “without paying attention to the present situation; despite the prevailing circumstances.” This is usually what people are going for when they say “irregardless.” If “irregardless” were a word, it would mean the exact opposite of what people actually use it for.

3. “Maybe she feels weird around me because I’m the only person that knows about her nose job.”

Here, Gretchen has misused a pronoun. A person is a “who,” not a “that.” Technically, Gretchen’s not exactly incorrect in this case, but she’s not correct either. According to the Purdue OWL, while “that” and “who” can be used when referring to people, “who” is preferred when speaking about a particular person in the formal language.

While the Plastics may not be interested in using formal language, the rest of us really should be.

The post Gretchen Wieners, biggest violator of grammar world rules appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Along with the many other questions I had at the end of the episode, I wondered why Betty used “forthcoming” instead of “forthright.” Was it a grammatical mistake? Was the difference in definitions I assumed to be correct a product of recent decades and Betty’s vocabulary a result of painstaking research done by the writers of “Mad Men”? Were my definitions wrong?

My definitions were wrong (mostly). Upon further research, I have learned that the definition of “forthcoming” is not limited to just impending events. “Forthcoming” can also mean “responsive” or “outgoing” (according to Merriam-Webster, which even cites “forthright” as a synonym). However, where “forthcoming” can mean both “impending” and “frank,” “forthright” can only be properly used to describe the latter. A tiny distinction — but, like most grammatical rules, it’s one that can make a huge difference.

The post ‘Mad’ details appeared first on The Daily Californian.

From my understanding, the lecture aimed to draw parallels between vision and sentence structure to illustrate the importance of context in interpreting visual information. The lesson I took home, however, was that headline-writing abilities are extremely important — otherwise, one may erroneously suggest that certain teachers are particularly abusive or that several foot doctors are unnaturally tall. Perhaps that’s just my way of convincing myself that my job at the newspaper is completely relevant to psychology and cognitive science studies, but that sounds like a personal problem …

In any case, that last headline really speaks to me.

The post Ambiguity issues appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Ignorance of obscure grammar rules is one thing, but silly mistakes like this are nigh unforgivable. Penguin Books, you appear to have very little respect for someone you hail as “one of the great writers of the twentieth century.”

The post Happy birthday, Mr. Nabkov appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I was elated. I had wanted to intern for a major newspaper for years, and, with the Post’s offer, my dream appeared to finally be reaching fruition.

I soon discovered, however, that my travails were far from over. Attaining the internship was the easy part. Infinitely more difficult was searching for affordable housing in a suitable location.

After some immeasurable quantity of time spent sifting through the bottomless abyss that is Craigslist, I began to lose hope. Suddenly, however, I encountered a favorable listing: Someone was offering a furnished studio apartment in Dupont Circle for only $1,395 a month.

Unfortunately, the posting’s content led me to look elsewhere — and not solely due to the actual price:

Unsurprisingly, I have no desire to live in a specious room. While I will never ascertain why, exactly, the room is specious — as my dear poster declined to include pictures — I can certainly conjecture.

Perhaps the balcony is the only existing part of the room, with the remainder being a mere but well-fabricated facade. Perhaps the room does, in fact, exist but possesses qualities that are mathematically infeasible.

More likely, of course, is that my dear poster is simply in need of a copy editor. I would be happy to offer my services in exchange for his apartment, and there’s nothing specious about that.

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