Still Learning (and Loving?) the Language

Posted: Friday May 27, 2011 under Random Thoughts

So why am I having to scour the Web-verse to see if ‘my big puffy bed’ needs a comma?

I’ve been a ‘professional’ writer since my first real job in 1990. A master’s degree in Literature (Or is it a Master’s Degree in Literature?). A writing tutor in grad school. Just finishing a 120,000-word novel. I should know this, right?

It’s just a simple double adjective (not a simple, double adjective) in the same vein as:

A long hard road

The thin red line

Her jagged little pill

Our ugly vinyl house

I’m not a huge fan of the comma anyway … ever since that embarrassing comma splice incident in fourth grade. Though I do, ironically, fall into the final-comma-in-a-series camp; e.g., ‘I’ll have two eggs, toast, grits, and extra bacon.’ I like that last comma, sue me.

So what’s the answer here? Is it ‘my big puffy bed’ or ‘my big, puffy bed’?

Well, let’s look at the rules (or conventions, if you prefer). The coordinate adjectives comma rule tells me to say ‘yes’ to the comma if I can answer ‘yes’ to two questions.

Question 1: Does the sentence still make sense if I put an ‘and’ between the adjectives? — My big AND puffy bed. (Yes? Sounds a little weird, but it’s not illogical.)

Question 2: Can the adjectives be swapped? — My puffy, big bed. (Yes? Doesn’t roll right off the tongue, but it could work.)

So, a comma then. There. It’s settled. Big … Comma Pause … Puffy.

But…. This still sorta feels like a no comma sentence to me. I prefer an uncluttered bed. In and out. Simple and easy.

How about the cumulative adjectives comma rule? It says I can leave out the comma if some specific adjectives appear in some specific order. A simple and easy solution here, perhaps? Let’s check the adjectives and order (from first to last):

Opinion: stupid, good-looking, funny

Size: teensy, average-sized, gargantuan

Age: newborn, adolescent, elderly

Shape: oval, flat, cylindrical

Color: yellow, purplish, burlap-brown

Origin: Martian, western, East Indian

Material: iron, plastic, paper-mache

So: He is a stupid, good-looking, funny accountant. (Three opinion adjectives, in the same class, get two commas)

He is a stupid teensy Martian accountant. (Opinion, size, and origin adjectives, in that order, get no commas)

Get it? Sort of?

Okay. Back to my big puffy bed.

‘Big’ is clearly a size. (It is a big bed … a mammoth bed … a super-huge, gargantuan bed.) But what is ‘puffy’? A shape? What if I said ‘my big billowy bed’ or ‘ my big cloud-like bed’ or ‘my big lemon merangue pie-ish bed’? These adjectives might suggest a shape, but are they really shapes? If not, would it be ‘my big, puffy bed’ and ‘my big white bedroom’? (One tuck, one no tuck?)

I’ll say … close enough. No tuck. No comma! If I’m wrong, the truth is too elusive for me, again. We’ll call it artistic license if anyone balks. You can break the rules when you know the rules, I always say … or at least when you know the general perceived spirit of the rules.

I guess I could have taken up math if I wanted more certainty in my life.

Now to the next sentence, and a couple big round white aspirins.

Gertrude Stein, from Lecture in America: “And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether has something to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. Anyway that is the way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very strongly. And so I almost never used a comma. The longer, the more complicated the sentence the greater the number of the same kinds of words I had following one after another, the more the very more I had of them the more I felt the passionate need of their taking care of themselves by themselves and not helping them, and thereby enfeebling them by putting in a comma. So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose, in poetry it is a little different but more so …”