ashley (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ashleyisachild) wrote,@ 2006-11-27 21:58:00 |
|
The oft-celebrated subtlety of punctuation
There are about 1,000 examples floating around out there that illustrate how meaning changes dramatically with the placement of one extra comma or semicolon, and I just wanted to bring another such example. Tomorrow on campus there's a computational neuroscience talk entitled, "Modeling learning and memory in REM sleep." It amuses me to imagine what this talk would be like if it were instead called "Modeling, learning and memory in REM sleep." It would perhaps be about dreams such as the one I had a few months ago where I was on my way to a photo shoot with Gwyneth Paltrow and Paris Hilton. That example is almost as good as the time Aaron and I saw an ad outside a quick-mart that said, "Good for you food!" and we wanted to change it to say, "Good for you, food!"
There are about 1,000 examples floating around out there that illustrate how meaning changes dramatically with the placement of one extra comma or semicolon, and I just wanted to bring another such example. Tomorrow on campus there's a computational neuroscience talk entitled, "Modeling learning and memory in REM sleep." It amuses me to imagine what this talk would be like if it were instead called "Modeling, learning and memory in REM sleep." It would perhaps be about dreams such as the one I had a few months ago where I was on my way to a photo shoot with Gwyneth Paltrow and Paris Hilton. That example is almost as good as the time Aaron and I saw an ad outside a quick-mart that said, "Good for you food!" and we wanted to change it to say, "Good for you, food!"
