I have been annoyed so much this week by a Javascript issue with Internet Explorer.

In IE6, IE7, and IE 8 it seems to be a problem to write code like this:

a={ foo: true, bar: false, };

The code seems to work all fine in Firefox and Safari, however, in Internet Explorer it will cause a Javascript error because of the last comma not followed by another declaration. Removing the last comma will make the code work in IE as well .

The issue is well known and Google has a lot of advice on it (simply search Google for “trailing comma javascript ie”).

I wanted to have something that auto-detects this issue for frequently changing Javascript code in a specific folder and that should be run as part of a test suite.

JSLint seems to be an excellent validation tool, however, it’s written in Javascript and I don’t like the clumsy workarounds that are suggested to execute Javascript on the command line.

There are also full-featured Javascript tools like Rhino and stuff around, however, they are not lightweight and cannot be run when there is no Java around.

So I put something together in PHP that tries to find the trailing commas in a bunch of Javascript files as well. It is small and simple and does not pretend to do anything else like all the other validators around.

The code can be found at http://code.google.com/p/phpcodetools/

 Long ago, I read a novel about life in the Appellachian mountains in the United States.

The theme of the novel is the fate of two children, whose writer father dies in a car accident and mother becomes paralytic, unable to respond even. So from New York, the children are transplanted to the primitive life in the rugged hills, where their grandmother lives, whom the kids have never seen!

I immensely enjoyed the novel.

When the grandmother wakes up the girl (the younger one is a boy) and tells her, at five in the morning, it is time to milk the cow, the girl protests: why can’t the cow sleep for some more time?

The have a negro boy as friend and guide, who will show the way to cross the valley and reach the next mountain which, by road will take half a day to reach. The boy dies in an accident, caused by illegal blasting of a tunnel, by a company producing oil. They want to destroy the hill to get oil.

A lawyer friend of the grand mother regularly comes and reads the bible, sitting by the side of the immobile mother, without even caring whether she hears it or not.

Once the children go to the lawyer’s office in the far away town, and are surprised to see plantains, pumpkins and other vegetables in the office. THEY WERE TOLD THAT VILLAGERS GIVE IT AS THEY DO NOT HAVE MONEY TO GIVE AS FEES!

The hill contains oil. All others agreed to sell land to the oil companies, but the grandmother refuses. In the end, the court decrees against her. She breaks down in the court; but the children become millionaires!

As usual, the lawyer reads the bible and in the end he conveys the news to the immobile mother. She smiles and tries to get up, something no one could believe. I think the lawyer  marries her.

Today I read in the science section of the Times Of India, that a patient supposed to be in comma for twenty three years, woke up to tell that he was fully conscious and used to hear their talk.

I was reminded of the novel!

Oh, Ladytron.

The way that I found you was actually pretty amazing. I was wondering about my boss’s office at The Mariners’ Museum and I saw a cd. It was a very amazing looking cd, as it was one of those file cds. So I asked her if I could borrow it and she obliged.  I then proceeded to take the cd home and put it onto my computer. It was composed of various mp3s with artists such as Devendra Banhart, The Posies, Bloc Party and Ladytron on it. I put it onto my mp3 player.

At first, I didn’t like Ladytron. It was until I actually listened, and I mean really listened. I analyzed every sing note in their album 604. I came to conclude eventually that Ladytron was the shit. No doubts about it. 

What I like about them the most is their use of synth. I really love synth, but not the way that I love Ladytron’s use of it. It gives me chills. It is just so…so..good-sounding to my ears, for lack of a better description, haha.  It isn’t too complicated sounding either, and I like that. It seems as though they really don’t have to try to make a great song. They just repeat the same chord progression over and over again. A good example of this is in their song “Paco!”. It’s just the same thing over and over again, and it’s not annoying at all. It just flows.

Reporting on celebrity fashion trends requires absolutely no knowledge of celebrities or designers. Or at least if you write for Yahoo! Shine, knowing how to spell the names of celebrities and designers is purely optional. In fact, knowing how to spell anything is purely optional. Case in point: Shine’s feature “The Thread.”

The writer doesn’t bother spelling Angie Harmon’s name correctly:

A misplaced apostrophe is a relatively minor offense when it happens once:

But when it happens again, it’s bound to rile some readers:

Also? Using that to refer to real human beings isn’t considered wrong, just “impolite.” Omitting any kind of punctuation around a movie title (like “Twilight”) isn’t impolite; it’s just wrong.

Again ignoring the journalistic convention of correct spelling, the writer hacks up Leighton Meester. (Or maybe I should say, the hack hacks it up):

The pronoun them has no visible antecedent and using who’s instead of whose is the kind of mistake you might expect from a fourth grader.

If you’ve read this far, you shouldn’t be surprised by a missing word and a misspelling of Claire’s:

Let’s hope this is just a typo and that Amanda Peet wasn’t actually wearing Mischa Barton:

I’m not the only one who cares about good writing, you know. I think the Olsen twins might care about how their name is spelled:

Shoes like platforms are usually sold in pairs:

Betsey Johnson is one designer whose name doesn’t require spelling accuracy. Same goes for celeb Taylor Momsen:

As for the funky characters that appear to be two hyphens? God knows what that is supposed to be, though a period or semicolon would be correct.

No surprise here. Another punctuation problem: Lindsay Lohan needs an apostrophe and an S:

Is this a new trend in writing on Yahoo!? Or just an especially egregious example of a longstanding acceptance of horrible writing?

It’s hard to think that it’s coming close to two years since Vampire Weekend found their way to everyone’s iPod with their self-titled début.  They have very recently released their newest music video for the song “Cousins.” The four members once again bring their signature twee-pop into their new material.  The single is very reminiscent of A-Punk, and while the video is nothing too spectacular, the song is fun and catchy as hell.

Vampire Weekend’s Contra is expected to be available January 10th of 2010.

P.S.  Looks like my video died.  You can still watch the new video here http://www.aceshowbiz.com/video/download/00010866/

I do. Aside from being a cracking tune from a band I’m listening to right now (Vampire Weekend), I have noticed that my punctuation has gone to pot. Actually, my grammar in general. I have a tendency to use commas left, right and centre. Listening to the below tune earlier, and cringing while reading over some earlier blog posts, I was reminded of  book I purchased about 5/6 years ago titled ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynn Truss.

The author, annoyed with the state of punctuation in general, decided to write a book to show the importance of the correct usage.

The title of the book is an amphibology – a verbal fallacy arising from an ambiguous grammatical construction—and derived from a joke on bad punctuation:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

‘Why?’ asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

‘Well, I’m a panda’, he says, at the door. ‘Look it up.’

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. ‘Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.’

I enjoyed the book but it obviously didn’t pay off.  I’ll make it my business to find it and read again and hopefully improve my punctuation! We’ll see. In the meantime enjoy some Vampire Weekend.

Often I write without use of rhyme, never do I write without reason. To write without reason is the equivalent of giving to charity under the guise of altruism– it just doesn’t happen. Just because what you pay out dwarfs what you receive in return doesn’t negate anything, it only hides it.

The phrase, rhyme or reason, in its various contexts, has always intrigued me. Not that I intend to solve some great mystery of the English language, or even that I really care what it really means or where it actually came from, but it is a source of wonder. I’ve determined that the phrase is a Romantic notion, and by Romantic I don’t mean giving flowers, sappy sweet, sweep your girl off her feet, rather that it comes from the period of Romanticism in Poetry. That can be misleading as well since not all Romantic Poets used rhyme in every Poem, but I digress. The Romantic movement in Poetry was an extension of the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason. Rhyme and Reason. One is a very effective, but no so clever mnemonic device, the other has no universal appeal. My determination is neither clever nor universal.

I write because that is what happens when I sit down in front of a keyboard. The cursor calls to me. It flashes hypnotically on the screen waiting to dash my next grand idea. My notebook is a little less discreet– there I am allowed to write my idea in all its original brilliance, without judgment, without error, only to later discover that I can’t decipher what I wrote. The scribbles transform my idea into something less brilliant, something judged more harshly.

Sometimes the hardest part of writing is inserting a period when you’d like to use a comma.

Sometimes the trickiest part of writing is knowing where to put the period.

© n17XI Vagabond Lit

No blog post could possibly hope to contain my anger right now (think healthcare). So, I’m deciding not to post on it. Unless I get even angrier about this, you won’t hear from me on the subject.

On the good side, I’m very proud of Facebook for not using the stupid, pointless Oxford comma.

Also, Mike Huckabee was funny when he said that “the only person to get a 3200 on the SAT was homeschooled.” The SAT is out of 2400.

…the great strength of commas in the right place…

- John Humphreys Lost for words

You know the shine that happens after you’ve used a computer keyboard for a year or so?  My key between the ‘l’ and the ‘ ‘/” ‘ keys doesn’t have that shine.  And there’s little hope to change that.  The Guardian article on semicolons may be one of the most entertaining and enlightening pieces about the death of the the little piece of punctuation that is both a period and a comma but neither a period or a comma.  But I think there’s another reason for the shift in punctuation.

How did the semicolon survive the age of the telegraph but hasn’t made it through the age of email and text messaging?  What’s changed?  Somewhere along the line the semicolon fell out of fashion.  Yes, it’s dangerous to assume anyone knows how and where to use a semicolon (especially for those of us that don’t carry around our Chicago Manual of Style in a hemp messenger bag) and it might be even more pretentious to use a semicolon and expect the same person to understand how to read it.  But the biggest challenge in the 21st century is to appear both lavish and earth at the same time without ever simply splitting the difference and this is where the semicolon lost it’s place.

It’s important to dress successfully, but never at the expense of comfort or utility (JCrew figured this out two decades ago) and although your chinos may have cost $200 you don’t want to make your co-worker in $40 Dockers feel bad, so you always opt for the worn chino style.  However, you must also wear a $400 Gore-Tex jacket when it’s barely drizzling outside to demonstrate that you really could go climb K2 this summer because you are that hip, that in touch and that real.  You must have read at least 3 Jane Austen novels, but you would never so display your literary streak as to publicly humiliate someone who has read only one Austen novel.  You should also know enough about Harry Potter to know his middle name (it’s James), but your Harry Potter fetish can’t be so extreme that you know exactly when the next movie is being released.  You must always be two things.

This balancing of appearances between the upper class and the bourgeois killed the semicolon.  A semicolon is too serious for casual writing and it’s not clear and direct enough for business proposals.  Using a semicolon nowadays would be a bit like combining your $500 distressed jeans with loafers (a criminal offense in Milan).  The real choice is between the simple environmentally friendly flip-flops (a comma), or the definitive designer boots (a period).  The challenge is to be both upper class and bourgeois and splitting the difference is being neither.  So we are left with a terribly out of fashion semicolon in a world of commas and periods; however, emoticons are still hip, so that computer key isn’t going anywhere yet.

Hone those writing skills.

Oh, comma, how you are misunderstood. You are under-used, over-used, and often terribly mistreated. But you are an appreciated and crucial part our our language, I promise.

So let’s take a few minutes to honour the comma, and read about the nine ways to properly use it.

You will probably hear (or remember) your teachers talk(ing) about local revision and global revision in high school and college. That is because they are smart (even though it may not always seem that way). Whatever you or your class’ opinion might be, your teachers have had a lot of education and have spent a long time writing papers. Whether your interests are in chemistry, agriculture, economics, art, or education, you and your teachers will, and probably already have, spent a long time writing papers. Revision is process that occurs throughout the writing process: but when you hear local revision and global revision it is usually after you have written a draft or two. Here is what your teacher is talking about.

Local revision is a crap term because what it really means is proofreading. Local revision is adding commas, fixing run-on sentences, capitalizing; you know, the stuff that spell check should usually take care of.

Global revision is where you actually have to do some work. Global revision has a few different layers-at its broadest, it involves changing your audience which can mean adding a few extra pieces of information, explaining an extra term or two, or completely changing the way that you structure your paper. Global revision can also mean making your topic more specific or more general. Unless you are a a grad-student or a specialist, you will likely not be writing about something as specific as “the effects of gene therapy in the maturation of fruit flies” or some other ultra-specific topic relative to whatever it is that you do, but you will also rarely be writing about something as broad as, say, “history of the 19th century.” Global revision can also mean changing the format of your paper from a print, paper based document, to a web-document or a podcast, or changing it into some other, equally different medium. So, when you are told that you need to make a global revision, consider changing your audience, narrowing or expanding your topic, or remediating your document (changing its presentation from one medium to another, such as print-document to web-page).

This has got to be the most inauspicious start you can imagine. The name in this headline on Yahoo! Shine is misspelled:

Oh, boy. After misspelling Agyness Deyn, is the writer able to redeem herself with spiffy, error-free copy in the article itself? Silly rabbit. Of course not. It just serves as a warning to the poor reader who dares venture further. I took up the challenge so you don’t have to. But I’m not happy about it.

I don’t know what’s up with the verb tense here:

And the writer continues to have a problem spelling Jean Paul Gaultier, although this is the worst of the manglings she’s produced.

Here’s a repeated word (wouldn’t a quick proofreading have found it?) and an overcapitalized Rio de Janeiro:

Halle Berry was a runner-up, though it’s missing a hyphen:

Brooke Shields gets the redundancy treatment and a superfluous comma:

Someone should remove the Comma key from this gal’s keyboard, cuz clearly she doesn’t know when to use it:

Oh, god, she can’t spell reprise and she’s totally lost when it comes to hyphenating compound adjectives:

I have no idea. No idea at all:

I’m still clueless:

I’m guessing she means transitioned:

And there’s another missing hyphen followed by yet another incredibly ignorant use of a comma:

Please tell me she was kidding with this misspelling of Steven Seagal’s name:

Oh, god. I’m speechless. She’s writing about models and can’t spell Amber Valletta:

Finally, one more meaningless punctuation mark:

Let’s see. There’s four misspelled celebrities (I believe it’s a Terribly Write record for a single article), punctuation thrown about like rice at a wedding, and at least three unintelligible phrases (or maybe they’re actually clauses). So it started off bad and went downhill from there. Fast.

Click here to hear the Audio of “Out of the comma”

Events have slowed and the needle has moved out of my red zone, so things are back to normal here at helluo librorum. At least as normal as they ever get.

In honor of Halloween and the scary month of October, I hereby declare this month BASEMENT CAT month. This week we’re honoring Mefisto Fleas and Lucy Fur. Please say hi to Basement Cat’s recrootment team of the month. I had a nice picture of some links, but I think my honored guests mistook it for a cheezeburger . . .

While I have your attention, please look to the right where my new “official” FTC disclaimer is prominently displayed. As a side note, please remember I do accept newts and like a good American citizen, I report them on my taxes.

Now I am still working diligently on my own novel, but if I have a few minutes, I always try to visit the good writers at Audrey Shaffer’s Open Chat Wednesdays at the Writer’s Chatroom. From 8:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. EST, you can take your questions and writing related issues to a group of vibrant writers who are encouraging and helpful about topics from plot issues to marketing your novel. I’ll miss you all for a few weeks, but know I’m thinking of you and will return as soon as possible.

On to the links:

Peter Cooper sent me this great link on outlining by Australian author Deborah Kalin where she talks about the four act novel structure that she learned from a Crusie Mayer blog. Visit Deborah so she can show you the fine art of Outlining Damselfly Style with Footnotes.

At Mots Justes, the comma series continues with Tuesday Afternoon Punctuation: Commas, Part XVII — Dates. If you have a question about commas, visit Mots Justes where Annlee is always delighted to answer your questions. She certainly solved one of my comma related issues, and I am in her debt.

Over at the BubbleCow blog, Gary Smailes believes there is a time when you can get a good critique from your friends. He gives you six tips to get the most from your friend’s critiques when he tells you How to Let Your Friends Critique Your Novel.

For those who are already published and are looking for ways to promote your novel, check out the Editorial Ass where you will find some helps and hints in the article: Your Pub Date, Minus Two Weeks.

Just in case you become published, it’s probably a good idea to know the publisher’s expectations in terms of promotion. @LizaWiemer re-tweeted this little gem from "The New Yorker" by Ellis Weiner on a letter from the promotions department to an author with Subject: Our Marketing Plan.

The new site for the Rose and Thorn Journal debuts tomorrow (October 15, 2009)! BUT you don’t have to wait a second to sign up for the their quarterly newsletter. Just go to The Rose and Thorn Newsletter to sign up! Right now! Then come back here, because . . .

Best selling author Linda Rohrbough shows you how the theme of your novel can be a selling point in her article Your Book’s Theme as a Tool.

First things first! Get your manuscript, go to Edittorrent, and start combing your novel for Alicia’s nine Marks of the Amateur – Starting List. A great post on writing errors that will make your manuscript scream amateur and how to avoid them in your story. While you’re there, please take a moment to read their Pointless FTC Disclosure Statement, which is much more detailed and funnier than mine.

Andy Shackcloth answers that burning question of what writers do with their time with his article 215 Things An Author Must Do.

Is the short story market truly dead? Alan Rinzler doesn’t seem to think so, and he tells us Why Book Publishers Love Short Stories.

As of this morning, Nathan Bransford has admitted to reading over 400 of the entries in his 3rd Sort of Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge where there are now over 1700 entries.

Peter Cooper commemorates the official mailing of his novel, The Ghost of Ping-Ling, off to Omnibus Books with his post The Silence of the Blog. I’m excited for Peter and I hope he does well!

My good friend Kelly Bryson gives an interesting Review of ‘BUY-OLOGY’ by Martin Lindstrom where she talks about marketing and writing.

Speaking of promotion and marketing, Jonathan Danz talks about what’s really important in his post Self-Promotion Just Like the Pros.

OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS

Thanks to @thecreativepenn for tweeting that Red Blade Press is now open for dark speculative fiction short-story submissions. They are not accepting submissions for novels. According to their web site, there is a very narrow deadline for submissions:

Only submissions received between September 17th 2009 and November 30th 2009 will be considered. Any submissions received outside this timeframe will be deleted unread.

So if you have a short-story up to 7,500 words, check out the Red Blade Press.

Keep checking out The Rose and Thorn Journal. Be sure to visit them tomorrow (October 16, 2009) for the official launch of their new web site! Kat and Angie are real excited so even if you don’t submit, go have a look.

MORE NIBBLES AND LINKS

Visit Andy Shackcloth’s link treasure trove at the Sunday Wash-up where Andy posts the best links that he can find on the Internet. He has over thirty great links this week, so don’t miss the Sunday Wash-up.

What’s all this talk about FTC disclaimers? Well you can find the links on it at Pimp My Novel Friday link-fest. For those who missed it, here is last week’s post entitled Full Disclosure Fridays.

That’s it for this week, and I certainly hope I haven’t forgotten anyone, but just in case roll through the sidebar and visit a few of the folks there. I’ve added a few new links you might find interesting, and I will continue to update and add links as I wander across the Internet in search of next week’s lunch hour links for writers . . .

Not a lot to report on the birding front. Hardly any ‘commons’ let alone ’scarce’ or even ‘rares.’ Best personal find was a Wryneck on the track to Cove Vean on St Agnes on Sunday. Leigh and I had taken the path less trodden as the masses rushed straight of for the Richards, Tawny, Blyth’s Tawny Pipit and the previous days fly-over Richards Red-throated Pipit. Yes it’s that fucking stoopid here.

Anyways here’s a bit of a photo dump.

The Drunkbirder shows Rob Lambert the worst Wryneck photo ever.

Comma

Peacock

Wryneck, St Mary's

Wryneck, St Mary's

Whooper Swan, St Agnes

Speckled Wood

Stick Insect

Siberian Reed Warbler

Basking Shark

Basking Shark

Fungi

Yellow-browed Warbler

Some people don’t believe me when I tell them that punctuation is really important. So for all those non-believers….

“SHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNN!”*

No, but really, punctuation is important. Don’t believe me? Keep reading.

“Let’s eat, Grandpa!” or “Let’s eat Grandpa!”

Ah… the importance of punctuation. Let this be a lesson kids, don’t forget your commas or your reader may be getting a message that’s completely different from what you originally intended! Every last mark counts, from quotation marks, semi-colon’s, and the ever important duo, commas and periods.

Hopefully, everyone has eaten with their grandpa instead of the other scenario of eating their grandpa.

Crazy Em

* Quote courtesy of the Pink + Purple unicorns from “Charlie the Unicorn“, the first one. Y’know. The one with the leopluradon.

** Example courtesy of my good friend E— W—–. I found this funny, and thought that this was a good example of the importance of the comma and so I decided to use it… and even wrote more around it!

The servant girl, in a hurry to break the news gasps

as she races along the path, nearly falling on a tree root:

The queen has gone, sir.

Later, she lies in Menelau’s bed (after he talks, weeps,

lays his head in a willing lap) curled small as a comma

against his back, a hook that catches on something recalled:

the flicker of Helen’s skirt seen from a window, at night,

a man’s hand, dark against white cloth, on her hip.

.~.~.

Situated in the pause between one thing

and the next. The particulars of absence:

Gone, gone, gone, gone. Menelaus wakes, bitterly

gazing at a girl who is not Helen. No other woman

could be Helen, with her golden sheen, loose hair,

limbs like water. How could she take a lover,

leave? She belonged to him, paid in full (oxen and horses,

not to mention slaves) to her father. He’d been the one

to win her. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.

Comma’s sharp point sinks into the place between words,

deep in that flesh; nothing moves forward without pain.

AUTHOR: Anne Simpson

POSTED: By Charles Ryder on Le Blogué.

Mathematics, not so much, but
I’m a grammatical whiz,
red-pen proofreading like
a superhero with eyes
that can catch and quash any subject-verb
disagreement, making the peace like
two college buddies sipping a beer
after slugging it out
over the same pretty girl from freshman comp.
I did my time in school and
take my sentence seriously,
watch laws I honored religiously
eroded to ignorance,
children today taught to divorce
punctuation and conjunction in a serial list,
a tragedy, a crisis, and a crime to
omit that final comma in a series,
to leave lists naked, bare and incorrect.
Give me a participle dangling
any day, a statement’s prepositional adieu.
Give me rules accidently forgotten
but don’t teach the great connector is unworthy,
don’t dishonor the pools
of my straight-A, felt-tipped blood!

© Bryan Borland