To comma or not to comma, that is the question

Will We Use Commas in the Future?

Maybe.
By Matthew J.X. Malady
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2014/01/comma_usage_rules_are_unclear_could_the_punctuation_mark_die_out_completely.html


In his amusing article "Will We Use Commas in the Future? Maybe"  Matthew J. X. Malady explores the question . about the comma as an endangered species, ( http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2014/01). 

 Mallady used this food metaphor  to  explain the dilemma. . .

In some ways commas are like ketchup and mustard. We’re glad those things exist. They surely make our french fries and hamburgers taste better. But we’d all survive without them. Some assert that the same is true of commas.

The article  includes  Linguist and Columbia University professor John McWhorter suggestion   that we “could take [the commas out of] a great deal of modern American texts and you would probably suffer so little loss of clarity that there could even be a case made for not using commas at all.”

As for me,  I'm all for the comma but would add my own metaphoric take. . . adding a comma to a sentence is like stopping to catch your breath. But to avoid comma excess,  use the comma  when you need to take a deep breath,  take a pass if all you need is a  quick pause.

Guess who' s describing who as "built like an office safe

 I'm looking forward to seeing the Keen Company's  revival of  Paddy Chayefsky's  Middle of  the Night.  Still,   Maureen Dowd's  NYTimes Op Ed  (Still Mad as Hell, Feb. 8, 2014, I  can't  help wishing they'd  opted  Chayefsky  by  doing is   terrific and more scarily timely than ever  <i>Network</i> .

 Of course, any  production with  Chayefsky-line  is  worth seeing and  makes anyone old enough to remember yearn for  the wonderful  stuff  seen on the home screen during the golden era of TV plays.

Collins  piece  described   the   late writer, who died of cancer in 1981  as   bedraggled and “built like an office safe.”

Christopher Plummer-- shy as a hand grenade

The 84-year-old Christopher Plummer  wrote an autobiographical  solo show  for himself in which he   offers himself up as a humble vassal to the likes of Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Rudyard Kipling who gave comfort during his painful boyhood, buffeted by his parents' divorce.


Soon, Wilde and others became the vessels by which he transformed himself into a jaded gentleman about as "shy as a hand grenade." 

To read  our LA critic's  review, click the link below
www.curtainup.com/wordor2la.html

You'll soon meet a "with recriminations pouring out of his mouth like bad greeting cards."

 It's been fifteen years since I saw  Donald Margulies's   Pulitzer Prize winning marital drama  Dinner With Friends.  I therefore look forward  to  revisiting  its  two  couples. courtesy  of  the Roundabout Theater's revival  at  its Laura Pels theater.   In  the meantime   a  simile  which  I assume  remains in  the  script:

A  wife's  husband  walks out on her with a tirade of recriminations " pouring out of his mouth like bad greeting cards."

Downton"Edith: about as mysterious as a bucket

 The January 19th episode of Downton Abbey provides this  amusing simile from  Lady Mary:

“Edith is about as mysterious as a bucket.”

Fretful as a bird --that's a character in Jon Fosse play

In  his review of  Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's play, I Am the Wiind   our critic   uses this simile to  describe  one of its  key characters:

The Other is aptly named. Occasionally playful, but mostly fretful as a bird

Metaphors that would be effective similes

"A play is a poem standing up." -Federico Garcia Lorca

This is  one of  those  metaphors  that  with the  addition of  "like" would  be as effective as a  simile