Grammar Moses: On punctuation and perspective

Many of you are kind enough to share with me multiple forwarded collections of embarrassing headlines from other newspapers, unfortunate misspellings or captions, punctuation puns and dirty limericks.

Even I've shared a few. And I've gone so far as to debunk some headlines that were doctored to look bad when they were perfectly fine.

Today, I rooted around for my own truffles. I found something on Facebook that for the briefest of moments made me believe the social media leviathan might be redeemable: a group called "The English Teacher's Daughter."

Check it out. It's a bit like a grown-up version of this column.

There I found a well-worn bit that proves the power of punctuation as well as our inherent biases.

Here goes:

An English professor wrote "A woman without her man is nothing" on the chalkboard and then asked the students to punctuate it.

All of the men in the room wrote: "A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All of the women in the class wrote: "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Consider this the next time you criticize someone's punctuation. You might just not see the sentence the same way.

Into the void Constant reader Cliff Darnall wrote in with a small question.

"I have a possible quibble. Shouldn't the headline 'Hillmon's 17 points puts Michigan in Elite Eight' be ' ... into Elite Eight'? I know that there was a space issue that would have required a slightly smaller font to use the longer preposition. On the other hand, I hear 'in' instead of 'into' in so many cases that it doesn't quite sound wrong even if prescriptive grammar might require the latter."

The AP Stylebook says "in" indicates location and "into" indicates "motion." By that standard, Cliff, you are correct. That's what the prescriptivist would do. The Wolverines were moving toward the Elite Eight (where their hopes quickly died with the rest of the Big Ten teams).

The verb "puts" suggests that movement.

Think about common usage for a moment. I don't know that I have a satisfactory yes-or-no answer.

You get INTO college.

You put the lime IN the coconut, you drink them both up.

You throw your dirty socks INTO the hamper.

You put your hand IN the hand of the man who stilled the waters.

I whisper IN your ear the words you want to hear.

These are all common phrases. But in each of these cases, AP would tell you to use "into."

I don't think it matters, Cliff. I'd rather people worry about something more consequential, such as the availability of good deep-dish pizza in Tennessee.

And finally

I wouldn't be writing this column or be in this business at all were it not for a guy who is celebrating a milestone birthday today.

So, happy birthday, Joseph Pulitzer. And to my pop, Dan Baumann, too.

Write carefully!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/executive editor of the Daily Herald. You can buy Jim's new book, "Grammar Moses: A humorous guide to grammar and usage," at grammarmosesthebook.com. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com and put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.