Personal Note: Talent in embryo

[nebroadwe]

My local goddaughter's younger sister, N, has the makings of a writer.

I was checking her homework last night and she handed me a set of comma usage exercises. (Serial comma usage, ha! Take that, Associated Press!) She was to take several short descriptive sentences and combine them into one long descriptive sentence; thus

The train was noisy.
The train was fast.
The train was crowded.

became, in N's careful handwriting,

The train was noisy, fast, and crowded.

And so on ... until I came to #4, which read:

The candy was red.
The candy was yellow.
The candy was striped.

Here N balked and produced

The candy was red and yellow striped.

Which did indeed sound better when read aloud than

The candy was red, yellow, and striped.

but, sadly, did not demonstrate the skill required by the exercise. "Ohhhh," N said, enlightened, and pulled out her eraser.

I'm glad she agreed with me on the purpose of her homework, because I'm pretty sure "red and yellow striped" should have been hyphenated, but not how. ("Red- and yellow-striped"? "Red-and-yellow-striped"? I want more context: are we talking about red candy, yellow candy, and striped candy or some candy that's red-striped and some yellow-striped or candy that's striped in both colors?) Anyway, I like N's ear for rhetoric. You go, kid.

Comments

[nateprentice.livejournal.com]

That's my daughter, alright...

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I knew she was going places when she intuitively grasped the concept, "Never bury your lede."

[kanja177.livejournal.com]

Poisoning her impressionable young mind with serial commas! And you, complicit!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Heh, heh, heh. The first comma is always free.