grammatical zeitgeist

From Facebook:  The Smaller Hooligan's Godmother posted:

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Okay all you people who think you're so smart for knowing your vs. you're and their vs. they're: Click "Like" if you know what an appositive is and when it requires a comma.

Saturday at 1:06pm · Comment · 

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    S Wow. The silence is deafening!
    

    Saturday at 8:41pm · 
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    The Man Who Lives In My House:   Google, the world's largest search engine, is an excellent site in which to find answers to esoterica.
    
    Like.
    

    Sunday at 12:16pm ·  · 
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    The Godmother:   Correct comma usage is not esoterica! But Google is an excellent grammar resource. You don't even need to know terms like "appositive." If only people would do a search for "commas around names" or "that vs. which" whenever they were...
    

    See More

    Sunday at 3:02pm · 
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After reading this, punctuation was on my mind, so I wrote the Godmother this email:

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Subject: Punctuation consultation


My brainy and creative amiga, whom I am appositively honored to count among my friends,


I am very fond  (one might say over-fond) of parenthesis. When a parenthetical aside is used in the middle of a sentence, but is complete (sentence-wise), does one employ a period within the parenthetical parameters? Or should it be left as a fragment?  I find this particularly troubling when I parenthetize at the end of the sentence (as I did in the final paragraph of my last post).  (and right here!) Should there have been a period just now, at the end of that last one?  and then another after the final curve-thingy?

          --Kate
ps I may have to blog some of this, but I will get your approval before anything hits the infernal net.
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She wrote back right away.  She is prompt, or perhaps I should say punctual (English Major joke).
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Katie! 

Just today I was writing a sentence like you describe. I left the parenthetical remark unpunctuated, although it was technically a complete sentence and occurred in the middle of another sentence. Punctuation is just annoying in the middle of a sentence (even when the parenthetical is a complete sentence), and annoyance should be avoided at all costs. The only exception I can think of would be if the parenthetical was a question (And who doesn't love questions?) because they require the question mark to indicate tone. Then I'd capitalize it and include a question mark.

When it's at the end of a sentence, it's much easier to deal with. You can simply punctuate the parenthetical like a complete sentence, like this:

I find this particularly troubling when I parenthetize at the end of the sentence. (I did this in the final paragraph of my last post, quite frankly.)

Of course the actual parenthetical you used:

(as I did in the final paragraph of my last post)

is not in fact a complete sentence and therefore would not require punctuation.

I hope this makes sense! Rules of punctation vary from style guide to style guide (AP Style is often different from Chicago Manual of Style) and are, frankly, a matter of taste. I go for maximum clarity whenever discrepancies arise.

Parenthetically yours,

(The Godmother)

This is a woman who knows about style, literary and otherwise. 

Band names

I'm in a lot of imaginary bands.  Usually I sing.  And I look cool.  I have an active fantasy life.  I never drum.  I can't imagine a sense of rhythm, no matter how hard I try.  Plus the drummer is way in the back. No one can see how cool she looks.  My bands have awesome names. Some examples:

Prodigal Tortoise--Acoustic Folk
Seven League Boots:  Indie Alt Folk Girl Band with feminist punk twist.
Yolanda Avocadeaux: Latin/Creole/Salsa/Lounge.
and my latest:
Bluebird Baboon:  Kid music that adults can stand, like Dan Zanes, who has the best hair in the world.

Vocabulary, applied randomly.

The smaller hooligan's assessment of the first day:

"It was great.  We didn't do any work.  I have two teachers who are awesome. but I forget their names, and I made a new friend.  But he hasn't fully evolved into being totally my friend yet, because I just met him."

If you knew the smaller Hooligan's two or three closest friends, you would know that his definition of "evolved" is unconventional.  A major qualification to be part of his posse:  you must be able to touch your nose with your tongue.  It's even better if you can pick your nose with your tongue.  That puts you in line to be supreme leader.  I will leave you with this image:

Prodigal Tortoise

This would be a good name for a band.  A nice man found our missing turtle in the alley behind our back yard.  I wish I had made video of the smaller hooligan joyfully cavorting when he heard the good news.

What if

head were eyeball?
The Smaller Hooligan wants to know.

As one of the Godmothers observed years ago, "He's really weird!"

I guess they don't think of me as a girl...

The Hooligans met a nice girl somewhere in between them in age at a park.  In no time, she had them roped together with her jump rope.  She held the ends and trained them:  "Faster, right, left! Stop! Bark! Jump!".  They were very obedient.  Actually, they were falling all over themselves to outperform one-another in their efforts to be subservient.

Later, I overheard the following conversation:

Smaller Hooligan (crossly), "Girls are so weird!  They always want to tell you what to do!"

Larger Hooligan (earnestly), "Well you just do what they want!  Then they like you."

I wish, just once, they would be slavish for me (and the week before Christmas does not count.).

rund oft

Every morning this week, I drop the hooligans off at camp--I've finally wised up.  The last week of summer is when summer gets too long.  I've outsourced it this year.

Each day I come home, and  there is the dog, sitting on the front steps, grinning.  He bounds over, absurdly pleased with himself.  He is all tail, wagging from one end to the other.

How is he getting out?  All the doors are closed, all the gates are closed.  I think he's leaping out the dining room window.  Or he's magic.  (I had a magical labrador, years ago.  She could levitate to the top of the  fridge and devour a whole cheese cake in the time it took to take a shower. Why do I like dogs?) I'm sure he left a horrible steaming pile in one of my neighbor's yards--my apologies.  We will add "close all downstairs windows" to our morning checklist, right after "make your bed" and before "brush your teeth".

Meanwhile, out on the back forty...one of the three box turtles has gone AWOL.  This is bad, as they are very quiet, well camouflaged and disinclined to draw attention to themselves. They're the opposite of the Hooligans.  Finding her will be a matter of luck. (We know it's a her because there is one boy and two girls--it's kind of turtle porn scene sometimes. Very educational....)

 Once last summer, the dog was actually useful, when he located a lost turtle. Turtles climb better and move faster than you would think.  Also, would you expect a turtle to even have the urge to explore?  They seem like sedentary creatures.  We keep them well supplied with snails and slugs aka:  crunchy wiggles. Today I will be improving the top of the turtle pen.