I just hate that the usage of " " invariably forces my mind’s-eye to imagine someone also making the finger-quote gesture. This mind’s-eye person always looks like Marty Feldman. I don’t know why.
Oooo, I can’t resist this.
Guess what? I’m “naked”.
I love great satire, Red:). That is what this whole post is, right? Certainly someone accusing me of comma splicing **wouldn’t put a fucking comma splice in his post. **Right?
And no, I disagree. Snark and derision are the pidgins of the *pedantic, insecure, *technically inclined assholes.
Think of me what you will, but if you relish being snarky, make sure you have the moral high ground.
Commas can be useful. For instance, consider the difference between these sentences:
“What are you, fucking spider-man?”
-and-
“What are you fucking, spider-man?”
But aside from instances where comma placement changes the context of the sentence, in an informal setting like this I think commas should be overused, rather than underused. I try to type here in a way that represents the way I would be talking, and usually when people talk they’re pausing every few words to adjust inflection, or just for any, y’know, stupid reason.
As a writer of sorts, I should be a “grammar nazi,” but my interest is more in accurately representing speech than pleasing 10th grade English teachers. If you’re the sort of dude who flips his wig over a comma splice, I don’t recommend you read The Road.
Oops, sorry. You’re “not” a dick!
Should be said in a Gob voice.
I agree. No one on here (I assume, from my experiences) wants to read leet, but neither should we obsess over commas. I’ve made mistakes here before in my comma usage I’m sure. But I am sure that my pitting, while not as good as what you’ve done in the past (and yours are great :)), is not “gibberish” as was claimed by Red Skeezix.
Well, Gob. What can I say?
Stopped clock, blind pig, yadda yadda.
I had to deal with the same sort of thing in a thread I recently started about my amusement over a Christian dating site using a photo in its ads of a busty girl in a low-cut shirt thrusting her chest out and another photo of a woman posing in a teddy with her leg all hiked up. A few people just couldn’t see the disconnect and I got responses like this:
I work with someone like the OP describes. Customers ask “what product can I use for X?” and he’ll reply “anything in the store”. A customer will ask “what is the difference between X and Y” and he’ll say “everything”. The thing is he actually thinks he’s being helpful.
On the subject of grammar nazism, I guess I should add a caveat that it drives me bucking fonkers when people habitually misuse it’s and its.
Screwing it up occasionally is as acceptable as any other spelling mistake, but if you just don’t know how it works, I don’t know what to say to that. It’s not a rule with a bunch of wacky exceptions; it’s pretty straightforward. Wouldn’t you pick up on the pattern after reading a few books or magazines or thought bubbles floating over Garfield’s damn head?
This from the guy with an intentionally misspelled username.
Well, yeah – that’s what I said.
I thought you made up the word “wierdaaron,” which tends to suggest that you can spell it any way you want. 
So pitting obese people is bad form, but pitting intentionally obese people is acceptable?
Yeah, I’d say so.
It is clear that Chris Angel was named after angels because he can perform miracles. He is a godlette.
Do what?
“If being a snarky asshole is required in technical fields” is a dependent clause. A comma after a dependent clause, especially a long one, is perfectly fine and not a comma splice.
Seeing as he had a comma splice in his actual reply, he was either not serious or doesn’t know what a comma splice is. Well, at least, he forgot for the duration of the post.
[offtopic]What bugs me is people who forget the comma that comes after a secondary place name. What I mean is, if I want to talk about Springfield, Illinois, there’s a freaking comma after Illinois. I’ve seen otherwise well-edited, well-crafted, serious works make this mistake, and it drives me bananas. And I think they need a bot to fix it on Wikipedia.[/offtopic]