Notes & Asides

Dear Mr. Buckley: In my lifetime I've survived World War II, seasickness and rock 'n'roll (they have the same effect), and a sting on the tongue by a crazed yellow jacket that found its way into a can of beer I was drinking last summer.

After all that, it is a strange counterpoint to admit that I'm often disturbed by the use or misuse of that tiny curvature known as the comma.

In your introductions to Amo, Amas, Amat and More and When the Going Was Good!, you are William F. Buckley (comma) Jr. How ever, on the NR masthead you are William F. Buckley Jr.

William Strunk Junior, in The Elements of Style, offers this rule of usage regarding the comma:

"Although Junior, with its abbreviation Jr., has commonly been regarded as parenthetical, logic suggests that it is, in fact, restrictive and therefore not in need of a comma."

As a reader of NR since its birth and a subscriber nearly as long, I long ago came to the conclusion that you are a master of English grammar. Do you agree or disagree with Strunk?

Cordially,

George J. Murphy

Rochester, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Murphy: I agree. Though I did not come analytically to the reason to do without the comma. It was one of the style rules of the Yale Daily News when I became a junior editor in 1946.

Cordially, WFB

Dear Mr. Buckley: Do you have any views on separated appositives?

In a report in Montreal's Gazette, headed "Surgeon Ordered to Pay for Death," a paragraph reads: "Donald Paterson's widow sued Rubinovich for $300,000 but lost. The appeal court overturned that ruling and awarded Carol Kimmis $90,000."

It struck me as unfair that the widow won on appeal, yet the money was awarded to someone else. Ah, but you see, Carol Kimmis is not someone else-she is the widow Paterson. Surely the reporter should have written, "Paterson's widow, Carol Kimmis."

In my retirement project of reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I find that Gibbon's appositives sometimes wander, e.g.:

"Superior to the last temptation of virtuous minds, an indiscreet and intemperate zeal for justice, [Julian] restrained, with calmness and dignity, the warmth of an advocate who prosecuted, for extortion, the president of the Narbonnese province. 'Who will ever be found guilty,' exclaimed the vehement Delphidius, 'if it be enough to deny?' "

I guess Delphidius is the name of the advocate, especially with the adjective "vehement," but maybe it's the name of one of Julian's advisers that I happened to forget from an earlier page. Anyway, why should I have to guess?

Yours sincerely,

Lionel Albert

Knowlton, Quebec

Dear Mr. Albert: Interesting that you refer to the problem as one of separated appositives. To qualify as such, I think, the equivalent is supposed to appear right alongside: as in, "Michelangelo, painter, genius, was distracted." The referent seems clear in the Gazette article, and not too hard to decipher in the other passage you cite.

But maybe that's only because I'm too cowardly to pass negative judgment on Gibbon.

Cordially, WFB

Dear Mr. Buckley: "And indeed, most people accept more readily being called clever, when they are knaves, than being called fools when they are honest: the latter they take shame in, whereas they preen themselves on the former. The cause of all of these things was the pursuit of political power, motivated by greed and ambition."

I am preparing some lectures on the Peloponnesian War. Come to think of it, Thucydides could do double-duty for a rousing 50 minutes on our current leader, don't you think?

Sincerely,

Bruce Brasington

Canyon, Tex.

Dear Professor Brasington: Yeap, Thucydides was a real winner. Many thanks.

Cordially,

-WFB

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