A birds has a syrinx, not a larynx. (Just for fun, the plurals are syringes and larynges. Heh.) Good gods, I don’t believe that (a) I wrote that, and (b) three editors missed it.
In other news, apparently I am the Queen of All Commas. All your commas are mine, mine, I tell you! Because after seeing the amount I have liberally sprinkled throughout this book, there cannot possibly be any left for other people to use. I use them for subclauses, but also to mark pauses and establish a rhythm in a sentence. And, er, there are, well, many of them, some in places where I now disagree with their use. Sigh.
Almost done Chapter Four; almost halfway through the 240 pages.
ETA: Done! And I’m at 109 pages or thereabouts. Off to get the boy.
You must, at least, share some, maybe half, of your commas, with me since I, too, am queen of the comma.
P.S. (,,,)
P.P.S. (,,,,,)
Don’t worry, there are a few commas left – I’m currently proofreading the upcoming issue of WynterGreene, and finding some :)
I too, am liking the “markup directly in the PDF” thing, or that is to say, I will be – just as soon as I figure out how to un-highlight something without recourse to the “undo” function.
Are you using FoxIt? You can right-click on the highlight, and a new menu pops up. From it you can select Delete or Remove or whatever it is.
Perhaps there is, in general, a surfeit of commas in the world.
If you are the Queen of Commas, then I, my dear, am their Grand Duchess; however, I may be the rightful heir to the throne of the Semi-Colons. (Or should that be the Semi-Colonies?)
I too am rather fond of commas… Though you know, I wonder, if if ZI use them sparingly or at times too much… But I hold noble title for ellipses myself…
Of course because your damn page appears in my screen with a damn white list off to one side so I can’t see what I’m typing, that last is all garbled. Argh, indeed…
It would seem, then, that commas, and their usage, (or perhaps, to whit, sub-clausian overusage), runs in our family. Am I not, in fact, the author of a sentence, some one hundred and twenty odd words in length, detailing the act, in bold defiance of the fantasy genre, of a main character purchasing, and subsequently donning, a pair of shaded spectacles, reprinted as follows:
“The purchase of sun screening spectacles was a simple enough matter, once the pair of intelligent young ladies set their minds to the task; asking local passers-by provided rough enough directions, which, when coupled with their own powers of observation and a few minutes, numbering hardly three quarters of an hour, of intent inspection into a variety of local shops soon led them, in scarcely the space it takes to describe their determined hunt for the sought after item in question, to a shop where they found and Kryzz purchased a pair of the aforementioned sun screening spectacles, rectangular of lens and deep dark wood of frame, which Vicki had herself deemed “totally too cute” on Kryzz, and which more than lived up to their ascribed purpose, namely, the shielding of Kryzz’s eyes from the not inconsiderable glare of the late afternoon sun, slanting into their faces as they walked along the tasteful avenues and busy boulevards which made up the neighbourhoods so closely located to the University.”
I had completely forgotten that sentence, even though you sent it to me on purpose when you wrote it. Wasn’t that whole story/novella/thing a deliberate exercise in that writing style?
Yeah, exactly – it was a NaNovel that I abandoned midway through November in favour of actually writing 50,000 words (of Squirrelman, actually). I think I’d just read Phoenix Guards or something; it certainly has a Brustian/Dumasian flair to it. Too bad I never finished it; it was quite amusing and the story was interesting enough. I had thought to rework it in a simpler prose, actually.
oh, the commas! poor, abused, overused creatures, they feature heavily in every overloaded page i write, along with their cousins, the semicolons. there are definately enough to go around in the writing world; i think we just hog them all as writers and leave none for anyone else.