Long Live the Queen - April 2010

There are a few things that I have retained since retirement. I still have many of my old suits, though I either can’t or don’t wear them. I have my old go-to-work jewelry – things like pins for my lapels – that sit in the drawer, unworn and forgotten.

And I still retain the tile of “Comma Queen.”

It’s not a title I mind, and it is certainly one that I earned over many years of whipping out the red pen and marking up all sorts of documents. One of my old bosses, Jim Murray, theorized that man’s basic needs were food, water, shelter and editing someone else’s copy. I have to agree.

The joke at the office was always, “Put a comma in, take a comma out.” I’d try to soften the blow of all that red ink on the paper by explaining that I had a comma quota and my compensation was tied to how many errant ones I found.

My comma queendom represents more than the mere comma. It encompasses all grammar, punctuation and spelling, and it is a responsibility that I take to heart – maybe too much to heart. Recently I was at the Met with my dear friend Katherine. I was reading dutifully (note that the adverb “dutifully” appears after the verb “was reading”) all the plaques explaining the paintings on the wall when I found one where a line of text was indented by a single extra character. Did no one else spot this egregious error? Why is this travesty allowed to endure? Did it ruin my day? Well, not exactly, but I’m still thinking about it, aren’t I?

In fact, I am still thinking of the typos I found in on the plaques in Monument Park at the old Yankee Stadium many years ago. I wrote to George Steinbrenner himself to let him know that there were spelling errors on the plaques of Elston Howard (called a “genteleman”) and the “courageaous” Roger Maris. Several years later I saw an item in Sports Illustrated noting the same mistakes, about which the Yankees claimed they never knew. Hmmm, I thought. Did George not even read my letter? Did the erroneous plaques make the trip across the street to the new Yankee Stadium? One of these days I’ll go to a game and visit Monument Park to see for myself.

Even now, I still get calls from people who have a grammar question or who need help with a little piece of text. As I revise the website for the Community Visiting Nurse Association as part of my volunteer work, I correct text and punctuation all the time. The nurses are amazed at the breadth of knowledge I possess on this somewhat arcane subject, while I am equally impressed with their expertise in caring for people. I think they win that contest, since I doubt a comma ever saved someone’s life.

My sister already has volunteered me to review college essays for friends of my nephew. Wait until next year, when he and the majority of his friends begin the dreaded application process. I might as well hang out a shingle, because I can see a line of teenagers accustomed to communicating only via text message vying for much-needed help. I can imagine their college interviews, picturing them whipping out their cell phones to text responses to questions from the interviewer right in front of them.

My grammar expertise no longer includes the ability to diagram a sentence (although listening to Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer’s endless sentences, I am tempted to try), but just coming across a dangling participle makes my day. (For those of you wondering, here is a dangling participle, where the noun and verb do not match properly: “Walking down the street, my eyeballs spotted the red car.” Your eyeballs cannot walk down the street.) I delight in putting a possessive before a gerund, as in: Tina’s knowing the rules of grammar is a good thing.

And it is a good thing, except that I cannot read a newspaper or magazine without finding errors. Books? Don’t even get me started on the typos I find in nearly every book I read.

These days I am on a mission to stamp out the misuse of the single quote. Unless the quote is within a quote, you always must use a double quote. This abomination is my latest pet peeve, as I see it proliferating. A related issue is putting the punctuation inside the quotes, where it belongs, a practice that has been abandoned by many writers. The third pet in the pet peeve triumvirate is the possessive vs. contraction or plural debate, as in “It’s a nice day” and “Its wingspan is 25 feet.”

Yes, I occasionally end a sentence with a preposition, as in: What’s up? And my self-diagnosed finger dyslexia means that I make more typos than I should. I’ll even confess to occasionally splitting an infinitive. Oh, the horror! But, thankfully, I’ve never accepted any sentence that ends with multiple exclamation points, dammit!!!

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but, for the most part, I wear it with pride. It’s good to be Queen.