I spent the plane ride home to California correcting grammar exams. What fun! Seriously. This fall an intrepid group of Harvard expository-writing students followed me for 14 weeks on a romp through the nouns & verbs, simple sentences, and—eek!—relative clauses. We wrapped up by sorting through the sentences of Lewis Carroll. (Alice in Wonderland is great for prepositional phrases—all those ins, outs, downs, and throughs.) We also contemplated the comma, the semicolon, and other sundry pieces of punctuation.
See For Writers and Teachers for a sampling of the kind of work we did in the class. If semi-colons still have you stumped, see A Punctuation Primer and Punctuation: Pet Peeves.
I can’t end the year without a little contest for you, my readers. Wanna win a New Year’s present from me? OK, see if you can punctuate the following group of words so that they make sense:
John where Paul had had had had had had had had had had had the teacher’s approval.
Enter your guesses in the comments area below. The first and/or most correct answer will win a first edition of Wired Style, the revolutionary book-in-a-box that is now an official collector’s item.
Related posts:
Posted in Blog, Talking Cardinal Sins & Carnal Pleasures | 10 Comments »
Tags:Pop quiz, Punctuation, Quotation marks
December 29th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
John, where Paul had had, had had had, had, had had had had, had the teacher’s approval.
December 29th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Well, that first comma is correct. Hint: the second comma goes after the THIRD had…
December 30th, 2009 at 7:32 am
John, where Paul had had had, had had had had, had had had, had the teacher’s approval.
December 30th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Pretty close. Still one stray comma, though. And, um, aren’t there two clauses there?
Oh, and let’s not forget that there needs to be something else that sets off certain words to make the whole situation make sense.
January 2nd, 2010 at 8:14 am
I suppose I’m a glutton for punishment, but I gave it one more try.
John, where Paul had had had, had had had had; had had had, had the teacher’s approval.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:23 am
You are so close!
There is one comma too many, and, um, don’t you need another kind of punctuation in there?
CH
January 7th, 2010 at 11:32 am
It is a very complex sentence. Let me try once more.
John, where Paul had had had, had had had had, had had had had the teacher’s approval.
January 7th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Super close. Note the semicolon in Suzanna’s last try. Somthing like that is needed. As well as quotation marks to make it really make sense!
January 9th, 2010 at 10:06 am
I have the hardest time with commas. I didn’t take one out because I can’t see which one should go, but the quotation marks, at least, make the sentence clearer.
John, where Paul had had “had,” had had “had had”; had had “had,” had the teacher’s approval.
January 9th, 2010 at 11:31 am
OK, this is so close I think I need to declare a tie between Pratik and Suzanna.
Here’s how the sentence should be punctuated:
John, where Paul had had “had,” had had “had had”; “had had” had had the teacher’s approval.
It helps to imagine the context: The narrator is recalling an English exercise in which John and Paul were working on their verb tenses. Paul had used “had” in a sentence where John had used “had had.”
Pratik and Suzanna, send me your addresses and I’ll send each of you a book.