Pomp and Circumstance

The journalism school graduation was today, and I went.

Mostly because my friend Lyndsey dragged me down with her – I promised to go and keep her from jumping onto the stage and trying to keep our friends from leaving – but part of me wanted to go.

Fifteen minutes into the ceremony, when Lyndsey and I were both sniffling, we realized we were the two worst people to attend graduation together.

“I think you and I are the most overly emotive people I know,” Lyndsey said.

This was the first year that lots of people I knew were graduating. Some of these people I only knew because of classes or because they had once worked at the Alligator. Others have been part of my daily journalism existence, both on the days when I wanted to give up and go to law school and the days I was excited over a front-page story. Some of them are friends I’ve called when the going got tough, regardless of whether the toughness had anything to do with journalism.

But journalism, its frustrations and all, brought us together.

So to Andrew, Ashton, Beth, Chad, Christa, Erin, Jennifer, Joey, Kori, Liz, Michelle, Pota, Vincent and Yudi: I wish you all the best.

And if you’re actually going into journalism — well, I wish a little extra.

Honestly, it’s just a nonessential clause

I was telling this story yesterday to a friend who is also majoring in journalism, which brought the complete frustration of it back to my memory.

I was sitting in my editing class a few months ago minding my own business when my professor asked the class the following question:

“Is there any grammar rule you have trouble with that you want me to go over?”

The overwhelming response was, “Commas!” followed by affirmations of “yes,” “exactly” and nodding heads.

I muttered something under my breath and fought the urge to bang my head on the desk in front of me.

Editing is a class for upper-level journalism majors. Most people in the class are juniors or seniors, and you have to pass several core journalism classes to get to this point.

In every journalism class I’ve taken, we spent at least one lecture on commas. Beginning with the first journalism class in the college, there is a five-point deduction for every comma error. If you don’t know how to use commas, those points add up quickly. We are required in these classes to buy books with instructions on how to use various types of commas. Also, I’m pretty sure no UF student first heard the word “comma” in a UF classroom. We’ve been learning grammar rules since elementary school.

Thus, I feel like by this point people should have figured out how to properly use that little curved punctuation mark in their sentences.

It was all I could do not to raise my hand and say, “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t cover commas again. If they don’t get commas now, they won’t ever get it. Just give up now.”

There are much more difficult skills to master in journalism than the comma.

Using commas according to style and grammar rules makes writing cleaner and less distracting to the reader. Commas are important.

I just wish people would try a little harder to learn the rules the first (or second) time.

Note: I have checked this post several times for comma errors. If you find any, feel free to mock me.