March 4, 2010

Grammar, Commas, and You

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Today is, apparently, National Grammar Day. James Joyner, in the course of musing on changes over his lifetime, says:

I never know where to put a comma anymore. We’ve certainly become much stingier in their use in recent years. The trailing comma in lists, for example, is gone.

Not on this blog, pal! I’ll use the Oxford comma til the day I die. Never let The Man take away your commas.

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We've never been very good at being conservative.

And usually, that serves us well in doing the ambitious, hard-hitting journalism that you turn to Mother Jones for. But it also means we can't afford to come up short when it comes to scratching together the funds it takes to keep our team firing on all cylinders, and the truth is, we finished our budgeting cycle on June 30 about $100,000 short of our online goal.

This is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell, as our namesake would tell us to do, for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability has a chance at the polls and in the press. If you value our reporting and you can right now, please help us dig out of the $100,000 hole we're starting our new budgeting cycle in with an always-needed and always-appreciated donation today.

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