Friday, March 20, 2020

Anti-Valentines Day Quotes and Sayings

Anti-Valentine's Day Quotes and Sayings Love is on sale. Look around you on Valentines Day. Every retailer is cashing in on the Valentines Day circus. Kitschy love cards, gigantic teddy bears, and stereotyped heart-shaped balloons fill the air. The only ones laughing, their way to the banks, are the ones who do not care about the warm feeling called love. They only know about cold, hard, cash. Enjoy these anti-Valentines Day sayings and mock the world on Valentines Day. W. Somerset Maugham, A Writers Notebook Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. Jay Leno Today is Valentines Day. Or, as men like to call it, extortion day. Josà © Ortega y Gasset We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies. Love is exclusivity, selection. Bonnie Raitt I cant make you love me, if you dont. J. Geils Band Love stinks. Laurell K. Hamilton Love sucks. Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes its just another way to bleed. William Shakespeare The course of true love never did run smooth Mother Teresa There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives- the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. Lauren Hammond You, my dear, are a creature of the night, you are a vampire.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Using the Oxford Comma (Or Serial Comma)

Using the Oxford Comma (Or Serial Comma) Using the Serial (or Oxford) Comma The band Vampire Weekend once memorably sang words to the effect of who gives a monkey’s about an Oxford comma? Well, we do, and the person reading and grading your paper will too! What Is the Oxford (or Serial) Comma? Overlooked by many, the Oxford (or serial) comma is a useful tool in writing. It is so-called because it is recommended by the Oxford University Press style guide. We use the Oxford comma primarily to avoid ambiguity in lists. To be specific, an Oxford comma is a comma used before the final and or or in a list of three or more items. We would thus use it like this: The American flag is red, white, and blue. Although a final comma is not strictly necessary here, you should still add it if your colleges style guide specifies using Oxford/serial commas. Why Use the Oxford Comma? To see why the Oxford comma is sometimes necessary for clarity, we can take a look at a list where the final item is potentially ambiguous: The most important things in my life are my friends, God and Michael Jordon. Here, for example, it is unclear whether the speaker is referring to three distinct things or simply identifying God and Michael Jordan as her friends. Adding the serial comma removes this ambiguity by showing that each one is a separate item in the list: The most important things in my life are my friends, God, and Michael Jordon. The Oxford comma is also useful when one item in a list includes and or or already, as it can clarify the divisions. For instance, take the sentence: My favorite activities are basketball, singing and dancing and acrobatics. We know from the repeated and here that either singing and dancing or dancing and acrobatics are meant to be taken together. But the list doesnt make clear which. Adding the Oxford comma solves this: My favorite activities are basketball, singing and dancing, and acrobatics. Be sure to check your style guide, too, as some institutions have specific rules regarding use of the Oxford comma. And if you would like more grammar advice, or someone to look over your writing, get in touch with the professionals at Proofed today!