Who wrote the AF CFI Renewal Course?
- Thread starter Ian_J
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SeatClutcher
Pasta.
Whoever wrote it needs a class in comma use.
should be
An emergency, like beauty, is to a great degree in the eye of the beholder. (Commas could also technically be placed after "is" and after "degree," but not only after "degree.") Some pilots can make an emergency out of a mag check, while others, if they lost a wing, would merely request a lower altitude.
tgrayson
New Member
There is a book called "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" that I was considering purchasing a few years ago. Then I read this devastating review by someone who claims to be a linguist. Regardless of whether he is or not, I realized he was right, and he was speaking to the author of the sentence you quoted:
=============================================
In reading through this book, I'm reminded of the fact that grammarians are not linguists. Linguists study and, to a certain degree, understand language; grammarians (a.k.a. sticklers) merely say they do.
The author of this catastrophe has no conception of the role of punctuation in writing (and neither do the sticklers who point out the admittedly embarrassing punctuation errors that can be found within the book itself). Spoken language is an oral phenomenon. Written language is an attempt to convey oral language; nothing more. As such, the role of punctuation is to convey all the information that words don't convey in speech. What are these things? Pauses, intonation, emphasis, etc. Things without which spoken language would fail. Viewed in this light, punctuation is vitally important. Why, then, do I give this book one star?
Consider this example: "The panda eats, shoots & leaves." This is how the book got its title. Obviously, the comma makes it appear that the panda is performing three actions, whereas its absence would correctly indicate that shoots and leaves are what a panda eats. So, here's a question for all the English speakers out there: How would you say those two different sentences aloud? There might be some dialectal variation, but one could summarize it as follows:
(1) To get the list reading (the panda performing three different actions), you place emphasis on "eats", pause, place a similar emphasis on "shoots", pause, and then a somewhat less pronounced emphasis on "leaves", and then end with a falling intonation.
(2) To get the dietary reading, there is no special emphasis placed on "eats", but rather two emphases placed on "shoots" and "leaves".
Now, a question: How many of the English speakers out there can imagine a situation in which you'd screw up (i.e., say one when you meant to say the other)? I would suspect the number is roughly zero. Why? Because this is something that, as a competent speaker of English, you merely do. It's not a rule you learn; no one teaches it. This is just something that characterizes you as a fluent English speaker.
Now for the big question: If a fluent English speaker would never make this error in speech, why would so many make the error in writing? This is why: Punctuation is seen as a system of rules that must be memorized and conformed to, rather than as a series of marks that help a speaker let the reader know how exactly his/her writing should be pronounced. If everyone understood punctuation as the latter as opposed to the former, the only errors that would ever crop up would be typos.
Regardless of how "cute" this book is, it essentially reenforces the false notion that punctuation is nothing more than rote memorization. For that reason, it will hinder, rather than help, the cause it's supposed to champion. I think this book is an abomination and should be read by none.
moxiepilot
Well-Known Member
I love it.
I can't tell you how many times I go to audio and have the voice talent chastize the fact there are not enough commas. I am a comma minimalist!
Anyway, I have to do my FIRC this weekend. Good to know I have a little entertainment to look forward to
I can't tell you how many times I go to audio and have the voice talent chastize the fact there are not enough commas. I am a comma minimalist!
Anyway, I have to do my FIRC this weekend. Good to know I have a little entertainment to look forward to
Orange Anchor
New Member
I guess we all knew at some time the right to arm bears was going to be brought up...
That's a looong weekend. I've been stretching mine out for like a month.
Seriously though, I can read through a section in about 20-30 minutes but it makes me wait 100-180 minutes before I can take the quiz. Frustrating!
moxiepilot
Well-Known Member
lol. You rock the colon too, but that sounds a little gay.
AviatorGator
Well-Known Member
That's a looong weekend. I've been stretching mine out for like a month.
Seriously though, I can read through a section in about 20-30 minutes but it makes me wait 100-180 minutes before I can take the quiz. Frustrating!
Never done/seen the AF FIRC course. Gleim's is a tad dry but you can blow through it quickly. It will give you nasty notices every now and then saying you are going too fast but it won't actually "limit" you.
braunpilot
What day is it?
How do you like the AF renewal, just to know for next year when I have to renew mine?
It's good. The lifetime renewal for only $125 is what sold me.
SeatClutcher
Pasta.
If the rules won't be understood, it does help to think of them as such a series of marks.
I would tell my (COLLEGE) students (the ones who would put a period in the middle of a sentence), "Just write the way you talk. Would you say this out loud the way it's written?" (No.) "No. So why do you write it that way?"
ILS37R
Well-Known Member
As someone who studies linguistic anthropology and a former professional copy editor, I may have to boycott this thread.
Written language is not strictly correspondent to spoken language. Many written forms aren't even phonetic. While both communicative modes surely inform one another, they develop in parallel, not in concert. Two literate Chinese speakers, for example, may draw the same meaning from a symbol yet have mutually unintelligible pronunciations, depending on dialect. Similarly, languages may have no spoken analogues: there are scores of ancient tongues which scholars can read, but which no one has known to speak for centuries.
Verbal and written language communicate meaning in fundamentally different fashions. Where a speaker has cadence and intonation, the page is mute. Where a text is absolute and unchanging, speech can be modified for emphasis and clarification.
The argument that improper punctuation is unimportant because one cannot incorrectly speak a comma is hogwash. Is spelling unimportant because a fluent speaker cannot verbally mispell a word?
And this is why the comma in, "The panda eats, shoots and leaves," matters. For a listener it is omitted because, in verbal communication, it does not exist. No confusion. As a reader, I must acknowledge the comma. If I don't know much about pandas, I have to make a choice: a) the author misplaced a comma; b) pandas have ink glands, or; c) the author is an idiot who thinks pandas have ink glands.
It's not all fun and games, however. Consider the difference between the intended 1872 US tariffs on, "fruit-plants, tropical and a semitropical," and the written-into-law, "fruit, plants tropical and semitropical." The latter exempts all tropical and semitropical plants, regardless of their ability to bare fruit, from tariffs. The law was amended two years later to put the comma in its intended place, but not before the country lost over a million dollars. More recently, a Canadian company lost a legal judgement worth an estimated C$2.13 million over comma placement in a contract.
Granted, the above are extreme examples. In practice, most improper punctuation--be it commas, apostrophes, semi-colons or em dashes--is innocuous, especially when read in context. But that's a hollow excuse for laziness. For the most part, I don't care how people write in informal communication, however wince-inducing I may find it, but in professional text, rampant poor usage is unforgivable.
Unforgivable not because one can't infer meaning, but because it says that the author didn't care. It says the author (or his supervisor) didn't think the documents--or their future readers--were important enough to proofread. Or maybe he is just uneducated: nothing starts a class on the right foot like bringing into question the instructor's intelligence.
Punctuation has meaning, and it also has a subtext: a well-structured document is valuable and authoritative. A poorly-constructed document is just something somebody threw together over a weekend. The packet given out by a professional business should be just that: professional. Give me amateur-hour crap and I'll know you aren't serious about whatever it is that you do. And if you aren't, why should I be?
But, hey, I'm just the snob who copy-edits the handouts while the uninformed new guy reads the PowerPoint verbatim; don't mind me.
For the record, I own Eats, Shoots & Leaves and enjoy it, foibles and all.
Written language is not strictly correspondent to spoken language. Many written forms aren't even phonetic. While both communicative modes surely inform one another, they develop in parallel, not in concert. Two literate Chinese speakers, for example, may draw the same meaning from a symbol yet have mutually unintelligible pronunciations, depending on dialect. Similarly, languages may have no spoken analogues: there are scores of ancient tongues which scholars can read, but which no one has known to speak for centuries.
Verbal and written language communicate meaning in fundamentally different fashions. Where a speaker has cadence and intonation, the page is mute. Where a text is absolute and unchanging, speech can be modified for emphasis and clarification.
The argument that improper punctuation is unimportant because one cannot incorrectly speak a comma is hogwash. Is spelling unimportant because a fluent speaker cannot verbally mispell a word?
And this is why the comma in, "The panda eats, shoots and leaves," matters. For a listener it is omitted because, in verbal communication, it does not exist. No confusion. As a reader, I must acknowledge the comma. If I don't know much about pandas, I have to make a choice: a) the author misplaced a comma; b) pandas have ink glands, or; c) the author is an idiot who thinks pandas have ink glands.
It's not all fun and games, however. Consider the difference between the intended 1872 US tariffs on, "fruit-plants, tropical and a semitropical," and the written-into-law, "fruit, plants tropical and semitropical." The latter exempts all tropical and semitropical plants, regardless of their ability to bare fruit, from tariffs. The law was amended two years later to put the comma in its intended place, but not before the country lost over a million dollars. More recently, a Canadian company lost a legal judgement worth an estimated C$2.13 million over comma placement in a contract.
Granted, the above are extreme examples. In practice, most improper punctuation--be it commas, apostrophes, semi-colons or em dashes--is innocuous, especially when read in context. But that's a hollow excuse for laziness. For the most part, I don't care how people write in informal communication, however wince-inducing I may find it, but in professional text, rampant poor usage is unforgivable.
Unforgivable not because one can't infer meaning, but because it says that the author didn't care. It says the author (or his supervisor) didn't think the documents--or their future readers--were important enough to proofread. Or maybe he is just uneducated: nothing starts a class on the right foot like bringing into question the instructor's intelligence.
Punctuation has meaning, and it also has a subtext: a well-structured document is valuable and authoritative. A poorly-constructed document is just something somebody threw together over a weekend. The packet given out by a professional business should be just that: professional. Give me amateur-hour crap and I'll know you aren't serious about whatever it is that you do. And if you aren't, why should I be?
But, hey, I'm just the snob who copy-edits the handouts while the uninformed new guy reads the PowerPoint verbatim; don't mind me.
For the record, I own Eats, Shoots & Leaves and enjoy it, foibles and all.
First, if you're going to boycott this thread do it because it is in the CFI Corner and is about flight instructor renewal courses.
Second, all you hijackers are saying the same thing anyway: "Punctuation is important."
tgrayson
New Member
No one made that argument. The argument is that memorizing rules for comma placement is foolish; you put a comma where it's needed to make your meaning clear, and no set of rules can capture all the nuances of where that needs to occur.
In writing, as in many endeavors, rules are for those who lack insight.
ILS37R
Well-Known Member
And thus, in writing, it is important to adhere to convention as one cannot presuppose reader insight.
Douglas
Old School KSUX
Yar?
