The Annual: We Think About Commas, So You Don't Have To

Picture credit score: © JANAE WILLIAMS/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

The Baseball Prospectus Annual doesn’t use a serial comma. This can be a irritating and counterproductive actuality caught up to now because of comfort and common indifference, very similar to the Electoral Faculty or the existence of the Yankees. I desire the serial (or Oxford) comma for causes that ought to be self-evident; for those who’re an anti-serial comma apologist, you recognize who you’re and what you probably did. It’s Annual season, nevertheless, and that implies that over the previous few weeks I’ve been methodically rejecting the Google Docs recommendations of our quite a few and heroic backreaders who’re all too desirous to insert a serial comma the place I’ve already wistfully excised it. Very like the right soldier, to succeed in perfection on this course of can solely be discovered within the quiescence of thought—the Annual has its mandates, and I’m merely the hand that sorts them out.

Okay, nicely, besides within the million ways in which the modifying course of requires fixed, all-consuming thought. It’s well-documented that those that spend loads of time in repetitive actions or thought patterns can have these preoccupations switch into their desires, a phenomenon generally termed the Tetris impact. I’m satisfied I’m quickly to begin experiencing the Feedback CMS impact, and my desires are going to begin trying like this [spoilers for the 2025 Annual comment of Calvin Faucher to follow].

I do know, I do know. You’ve been proven that the guide that you’re dutifully preordering at this time hyperlink is however a shadow on the wall of the actual guide. Except…the guide is the actual factor and I’m caught studying by candlelight?

A REBUTTAL, by P. Dubuque.

Commas are pretend. Model guides are homes constructed of straw. The idea of readability in writing is a candy little bedtime story we inform our youngsters and our freshmen undergraduate college students, a contemporary morality story offered to make them behave, linguistically, as advantages the state. The notion that we as writers have in our depths, by means of the applying of our protocol some secret energy to make ourselves understood by the reader, some management over the method, is lovable. Kids don’t consider the tree after they choose the cherries. The that means they make is theirs, and theirs alone. We’re powerless. Commas are a easy oratorical machine, slapping one’s palms towards the facet of the rostrum, and nothing extra.

Did the paragraph above embody a serial comma? For those who even thought to note, you’ve already failed. To even think about grammar when absorbing concepts is a willful abstention from the method of studying, a separation of 1’s self from fact. It’s no higher or totally different than the irony poisoning of a YouTube-obsessed pre-teen, reacting to a response video. Don’t faux that the serial comma is a few last bastion towards the corruption of language, a pure beam of sunshine. Nobody really eats grandma, or thinks Hitler and Stalin are strippers. We’re not attorneys and these aren’t wills. Your commas aren’t so highly effective. You simply need to impress individuals by being appropriate, and grammar is a approach to gown up your concepts in a pleasant clear go well with.

And if that’s what you need, go forward. Get pleasure from overdressing. (There isn’t even any sarcasm supposed there, not {that a} millennium of grammatical developments might help you discern it anyway. Put on what you need to put on.) However the Annual isn’t sporting a go well with. It’s sporting a polo and khakis and sitting a dozen rows up within the scouts’ part, tossing out little insights and jokes and chatting away the center innings of each single ballgame in existence, averaged collectively. And that’s why we write the best way we discuss, as a result of studying about baseball ought to really feel like watching baseball, and when individuals watch baseball they use contractions, they’ll let a sentence run on, they usually’ll pause each time within the sentence it feels proper. The ballplayers put on pants that match their shirts. We is not going to take this too significantly.

A COMMENT, by C. Goldstein

I feel if P. Dubuque had the braveness of his convictions, his paragraph wouldn’t embody any commas in any respect.

,,,

Final thing: Please do think about preordering the Annual for your self or somebody you’re keen on (or each)! It’s an actual labor of affection, not just for the editors however for the handfuls of proficient specialists who write, remark, and supply suggestions for his or her friends. That is actually not the best setting for print media, and orders in addition to word-of-mouth are invaluable; you’d be hard-pressed to discover a information to the 2025 season imbued with extra collected insights of people that know so much about baseball (and, sadly, commas). That may solely occur due to our readers, whether or not it’s those that have been shopping for for the reason that starting or the newcomers we hope to show into loyalists. This would be the thirtieth version of the guide and we wish to suppose it’s getting higher yearly—and readers are likely to agree! We’ll be sending the guide off to print quickly, and copies could be anticipated in your palms nicely upfront of the season.

Order the 2025 Baseball Prospectus Annual Right here

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