For those who don't know, I have another blog called Questioning my Intelligence. Not much has been posted on it in the past few years, but our president's alleged comments over the weekend have made me realize how much the world needs good words preaching kindness and love and joy and gentleness. I'm writing again. If you're interested, please check it out.
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The new Hero Arts set Summer Garden is delightful. It's got a plethora of pretty sentiments and a garden's worth of little flowers and critters.
But it's missing a comma.
Why does this bother me?
Oh, right. I was an English teacher.
Whenever you directly address someone, the name needs to be separated from the greeting by a comma. Hi, Sally. Merry Christmas, Ruth. Hello there, beautiful.
There is no comma in the set, but clearly, we're supposed to put the hello there and beautiful, gorgeous, or darling together. Now, you might notice there's an apostrophe in the largest sentiment, and apostrophes are, for artistic purposes, the same as commas. But the apostrophe is buried in the flashing and not easy to isolate. I could have done it, I suppose, with clever masking, but I think we've established that I'm lazy.
So I stuck a bling where the comma should be. Yes, it's more like a period than a comma. I actually tried putting a tiny bling under the medium bling to give the idea of a comma, but it looked weird and not at all comma-like. So I decided that the single bling would have to suffice. After all, this is art.
Whatever. Basically, I gave up. Some battles are simply not worth fighting, such as the battle to stop the president from tweeting, but next time, I'll probably use the apostrophe, no matter how complicated because grammar matters, people!
Also, there's a bling covering a mistake, but I shan't tell you which because there are no mistakes, only opportunities for embellishment.
The butterfly was colored with Copics and then painted with a clear Wink of Stella brush pen. For a final touch, I slightly rounded the corners of the stamped panel and its mat with old-school scallop scissors.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan
Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Summer Garden
ink: Memento black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, Copics (for coloring the butterfly and rhinestones), Wink of Stella brush pen, scallop scissors, a dash of OCD
I KNOW...missing commas irk me too! Sometimes, I just have to take pen in hand and MAKE one!! thanks, as always, being a muse AND amusing!!! BIG warm hugs, Sherry
ReplyDeleteoh, did I really need that comma after "Sometimes" ? tee-hee
ReplyDeleteI think the bling does the job. Enjoy your cards and posts. How is Cooper?
ReplyDeleteI suppose that text speak makes you crazy. UR instead of your or you're. I suspect UR was invented to hide the ignorance of the texter. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm pro comma and proud of it! I'm not eating grandma.
ReplyDeleteThose kinds of things really bug me too. I'm a copy editor, so I feel your pain. I decided to control my blood pressure by creating an email folder called "Grammar Nerds" and collect the most egregious errors and send them to my grammar-nerdy friends. My latest contribution was a label on a bookstore shelf that read "3th grade"!
ReplyDeleteArgh! You know, I'm extremely forgiving of errors on social media, in casual discourse, and in blogs (it would take me a lot longer to post if I carefully line-edited each sentence), but when professional publications and businesses screw up, it's irritating.
DeleteFab cardvx
ReplyDeleteI've often picked up a marker to take care of this sort of problem, especially when I want to separate a sentiment on the front and the inside of a card with a dot dot dot, dot dot dot (I no longer can type that without hearing Stephen Colbert in my head).
ReplyDeleteMore than once I've decided not to get a stamp set because the sentiments were not properly punctuated. How could I, a copy editor, send someone a card without proper punctuation? The horror!
ReplyDeleteThe lack of comma in this Hero Arts set bugs me too—but in this case I can extend the benefit of the doubt. A lot of the sentiments can be both used alone and paired with another ("hello there," "hello there, beautiful"; "love you," "love you, darling"; "you shine," "gorgeous, you shine!"), and a built-in comma would limit their use to pairing only. (That's no excuse for the comma missing from the largest sentiment of the bunch, however, since that sentiment is designed to be used as a single entity.) Still, I wish HA had included a freestanding comma! It's so hard to draw punctuation marks to match special fonts like these, and if you're using colored ink, it's well-nigh impossible. Bling is a clever alternative.
I agree with you, Susan. I sometimes draw a comma or period with a really fine black pen. Also, your other blog is wonderful and completely correct. I hope a lot of people subscribe as I do.
ReplyDelete