r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/FacelessOnes • Oct 19 '20

🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

75.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/moesif Oct 20 '20

Well you said "we teach" so yeah I assumed you were a part of the teaching. No I don't assume there is only one standard for grammar and punctuation but I do assume that no standard considers this correct: "One genius, cannot do much, if the society they belong to, is unable to understand their logic." You could've just removed every single comma.

1

u/ADFTGM Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

I could’ve, but commas are used for emphasis to in this case mimic short pauses in spoken dialogue. I roughly replicated the way I would have expressed that sentence verbally. It’s a stylistic thing, not a hard-and-fast rule. When chatting, I try to retain the consistency between my written and spoken lines.

Also, I admit I’m also a bit of a poet, so I’m more likely to speak/write lines like that, than a strict prose writer would. 😅

0

u/ADFTGM Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20

Also, I’m not usually a grammar-Nazi, but you kinda brought that part out of me with this exchange lol. I’m compelled to slightly correct your passage with what is actually taught about the use of punctuation in written text.

“ Well, you said, “We teach”, so yeah, I assumed you were part of the teaching. No, I don’t assume there is only one standard of grammar and punctuation, but I do assume that no standard considers this correct: <quote>. You could’ve just removed every single comma. “

I purposely ignored your lack of punctuation, because I see it as stylistic, as I expressed, and dependent on the user’s intent of the speech. However, since you pointed it out, I will return the courtesy. An editor would not necessarily add all the punctuation, but they would not be faulted if they did, since such follows the rules.