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. It is a irritating and counterproductive actuality caught previously on account of comfort and common indifference, very like the Electoral Faculty or the existence of the Yankees. I choose the serial (or Oxford) comma for causes that must be self-evident; for those who’re an anti-serial comma apologist, you already know who you might be and what you probably did. It’s Annual season, nonetheless, and that signifies that over the previous few weeks I’ve been methodically rejecting the Google Docs recommendations of our quite a few and heroic backreaders who’re all too wanting to insert a serial comma the place I’ve already wistfully excised it. Very like the proper 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, properly, 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 e-book that you’re dutifully preordering at present hyperlink is however a shadow on the wall of the true e-book. Until…the e-book is the true 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 offered to make them behave, linguistically, as advantages the state. The notion that we as writers have in our depths, by way of the appliance of our protocol some secret energy to make ourselves understood by the reader, some management over the method, is lovable. Kids don’t consider the tree after they decide the cherries. The that 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 embrace a serial comma? Should 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 fake that the serial comma is a few closing 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’re not legal professionals and these will not be wills. Your commas will not be so highly effective. You simply wish to impress folks by being appropriate, and grammar is a technique to costume up your concepts in a pleasant clear go well with.

And if that’s what you need, go forward. Get pleasure from overdressing. (There isn’t even any sarcasm meant there, not {that a} millennium of grammatical developments will help you discern it anyway. Put on what you wish to put on.) However the Annual is just not carrying a go well with. 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 folks watch baseball they use contractions, they’ll let a sentence run on, and so they’ll pause every time within the sentence it feels proper. The ballplayers put on pants that match their shirts. We won’t take this too significantly.

A COMMENT, by C. Goldstein

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

,,,

Very last thing: Please do think about preordering the Annual for your self or somebody you like (or each)! It’s an actual labor of affection, not just for the editors however for the handfuls of proficient consultants who write, remark, and supply suggestions for his or her friends. That is definitely not the best 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 loads about baseball (and, sadly, commas). That may solely occur due to our readers, whether or not it’s those that have been shopping for for the reason that starting or the newcomers we hope to show into loyalists. This would be the thirtieth version of the e-book and we prefer to assume it’s getting higher yearly—and readers are likely to agree! We’ll be sending the e-book off to print quickly, and copies will be anticipated in your palms properly upfront of the season.

Order the 2025 Baseball Prospectus Annual Right here

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