{"id":2268,"date":"2016-07-26T13:30:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T19:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2020-11-25T11:18:50","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T17:18:50","slug":"a-sportswriter-cries-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/commas\/a-sportswriter-cries-foul\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sportswriter Cries “Foul!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Jenkins, San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> sports columnist<\/span><\/p>\n

The hyphens are coming, and beware\u2014they\u2019re taking over. Commas, not so much. Commas have gone extinct. These are a couple of my pet peeves when it comes to grammatical violations in print. More on that later. In the meantime:<\/p>\n

Somehow, a guy named Al showed up in all right<\/em>, and it\u2019s now \u201calright.\u201d Nope. Wrong. And I have no time for \u201canytime.\u201d It has to be two words: any time<\/em>. Once you\u2019ve written \u201cany hour\u201d or \u201cany minute,\u201d how can you go with \u201canytime\u201d?<\/p>\n

How about the second time in as many days<\/em>? As many days as what? Should be in two days<\/span><\/span><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Going forward<\/em>. It\u2019s not bad grammar, it just has no place. What, as opposed to going backward? Eliminate going forward<\/em> from every usage, in print or conversation, and it won\u2019t be missed.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the sentence that takes forever to reach the point\u2014and by the time you get there, you\u2019re no longer interested:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe occasion of the Wallace brothers burning down the Gazebo with the very last match at their disposal and then pretending it never happened at the after-party at Bob\u2019s house takes a special place in history.\u201d Taken literally, what <\/em>takes a special place in history?<\/p>\n

As for hyphens, here are a few really dreadful ones I\u2019ve seen in responsible newspapers lately:<\/p>\n

The tension-level was high
\nHe\u2019s the odd-man-out
\nDare-we-say he was confused?
\nThat\u2019s the elephant-in-the-room
\nThe best record of all-time<\/p>\n

Commas? Somehow, they have been deemed unnecessary. More actual examples:<\/p>\n

Thanks for trying guys (maybe you should go back to gals)
\nDon\u2019t go Tiger (go ballistic, or go east)
\nSay It Ain\u2019t So Spain (it ain\u2019t so hot, either)
\n\u201cMeaning what ace?\u201d (actually saw this in a David Milch script)
\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t a funeral you know.\u201d (True, but I think my friend Pete recognizes it.)<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the misplaced apostrophe, so common on the street:<\/p>\n

\u201cFresh sandwich\u2019s\u201d
\n\u201cShe fly\u2019s with her own wing\u2019s\u201d<\/p>\n

Long ago, in the press box of the old Comiskey Park in Chicago, there was a sign on the women\u2019s bathroom that said \u201cLadie\u2019s.\u201d It was a charming sign, in the form of a baseball\u2014seams and all\u2014but that apostrophe drove me nuts. Year after year, covering the Oakland A\u2019s, I wasn\u2019t able to walk past that thing without seething.<\/p>\n

Then in 1990 the park closed down. Visitors knew they\u2019d be making their last visit to the storied old yard. On my last night there, about a month before the season ended, I dawdled and stalled until I was the last person in the press box. And I was prepared. I whipped out a bottle of Wite-Out and made that apostrophe vanish.<\/p>\n

Postcript: Wayne Hagin, a broadcaster at the time (can\u2019t remember what team), knew about my mission. One night near the very end of the season, he yanked that sign off the bathroom wall and stashed it in his briefcase.<\/p>\n

It now resides in the guest room of my house. Ladies welcome.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Bruce Jenkins\u2019s new book, Shop Around: Growing Up With Motown in a Sinatra Household<\/em>, is available in bookstores and on Amazon.com. Jenkins is the son of Gordon Jenkins, who worked with all the greats of the pre-Elvis era (including Judy Garland, Nat \u201cKing\u201d Cole, and Sinatra). The Miracles\u2019 \u201cShop Around,\u201d the first big hit of the Motown empire, turned Bruce\u2019s life around at the age of 12. Shop Around<\/em> is a book for soul-music lovers and anyone whose parents were on entirely different musical wavelengths.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Jenkins, San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist The hyphens are coming, and beware\u2014they\u2019re taking over. Commas, not so much. Commas have gone extinct. These are a couple of my pet peeves when it comes to grammatical violations in print. More on that later. In the meantime: Somehow, a guy named Al showed up in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,13,25,35,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apostrophes","category-commas","category-humor","category-hyphens","category-possessives"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}