Paradoxes

At base, language is a way of showing relationships. A normal sentence in what language ever usually consists of a noun phrase, a verb phrase, and a noun phrase. The noun phrases name things; the verb phrase defines the relationship between them. "Ice is cold," shows us the relationship between the object, ice, and the condition, cold.
With me so far? One of the problems with language is that it doesn't put any necessary conditions on any of these relationships (It does, actually, but bear with me). So, you can put a noun phrase-verb phrase-noun phrase combo together that doesn't make sense, such as "The cheese imagined the bookcase." Well, maybe it makes sense in Wonderland, but not in my office where I have both cheese and a bookcase.
We can even put together a combination that is self-contradictory, such as "No generalization is worth a damn." Since that's a generalization, it isn't worth a damn. But wait, if it doesn't hold, then it's okay to say it. Wait! If it holds, then it doesn't hold.
People waste a lot of time worrying about paradoxes such as this.
It helps if we remember that paradoxes are literary constructs, and have no relationship to reality. Outside of language, there are no paradoxes.
Now, doesn't that make you feel better.

Clarity denied

Some years back, the National Council of Teachers of English developed a "doublespeak" department. Doublespeak is a term invented by George Orwell to describe the language used in the novel 1984. There, language is used to confuse, obfuscate, and generally mislead people. The NCTE had tons of fun with the Department of Defense during the Vietnam war, citing example after example of what they considered doublespeak.
Well, doublespeak is alive and well. And it has consequences. Let me explain.
This morning, my local paper carried a story on two alumni basketball players who gave $100,000 to the local university. Nice, no? Okay, but pay attention. Here's what the article said:"the university has developed plans to renovate and expand the off-court facilities within the [arena] to build a sustainable future. [paragraph break] These renovations will enhance space for practice and game day preparation." (Logan Herald Journal, June 18, B-1)
Notice the lack of specificity? That's one good sign that we are being doublespoken. We're not too sure what the loot is going to be used for. The references to "off court," and "enhance space for ... game day preparation" lead me to believe that they are going to gussy up the locker room, possibly with electronic games, TV, a sauna, massage therapy, walk-in fridge, pool table, leather couches, or any manner of gold-plated accessories.
The consequences of doublespeak? If you are not specific, you have no one to blame but yourself if people assume the worst. I don't know that the university is a little ashamed of what the money is going to be used for. Or feels that people might "take it wrong," or "misunderstand." But it's a pretty good bet.
Unless, of course, the writer simply has no idea how to report news.

Punctuation

You can get along without punctuation at all, you know. Don Marquis, a newspaperman, wrote a series of articles in the 20's and 30's that were later collected in a book, Archie and Mehitabel. The purported writer of the articles was a free-verse poet who died and whose soul was transmigrated into a cockroach. The cockroach couldn't make capitals or punctuation on the typewriter, as he actuated each key by diving onto it head first. It's wonderful reading and I recommend it to everyone.
But we are neither cockroaches nor free-verse poets (most of us), and we need punctuation. So, what's the most important punctuation mark? Look at the sentences you've just read and it should become clear. There are lots of periods, to be sure, but they simply serve to end the sentence, and we could probably make do without them. It's the commas that we use mostly. I've written elsewhere about getting rid of apostrophes, and I think that semicolons are the scum of the punctuation world, but commas we can't get rid of (Do you know the joke about the English teacher who fell down, hit her head, and was in a comma for a year?).
Because they are so important, they can be (and are) misused. In fact, there's a whole book about the misuses of the comma: Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.
Are there any simple rules for using commas? Yes: If you have lots of comas in a sentence, re-write the sentence.

Troublesome words

Quick now. what is the difference between ravel and unravel? Or, what is the difference between flammable and inflammable? The answer in both cases is, "There isn't any." Flammable and inflammable both mean, "able to burn," and ravel and unravel both mean "coming apart, as fabric." Which is good, because if Shakespeare had to say that sleep "knits up the unraveled sleeve of care," he'd be in trouble because it doesn't scan well. And how about a good old word like entrance. "But," you say, "that's a common word with no problems." Oh yeah? How about this sentence, "Her words served to entrance me." Ouch. Different word entirely, same spelling. English does that rather a lot. Two words will look alike, be spelled alike, and yet have no relationship to each other. Or, in a related case, take two words that mean about the same thing: base and basis. They came into the language at different times from a common root word. Now, the plural of base is bases. The plural of basis is also bases, but pronounced differently. It would be something like basees, with the long e of bee or peen.
Remember, when you hear the Germans or the Spanish bragging about their languages' regular pronunciation that it's a poor language that has only one way of doing things.

Glitches

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The problem with "grammatical" errors is not that they violate some cosmic law, but that they confuse or, more to the point, distract. We pay attention to the language and not to the meaning. Consider, for instance, the following announcements, which I gathered in yesterday.

The yellow one shows the classic subject/verb problem. The subject (displays) is plural, but the verb (is) is singular. Now, we wouldn't normally say "displays is," so why is it done here? It's clear, isn't it, that the phrase "of affection" is the culprit. It's between the subject and the verb, and the fact that affection is singular (well, non-count) seduced the writer into using the singular verb.

The cure? Try not to put anything between the subject and the verb.

Here's another one, a different problem. In this one, the writer has, unfortunately used the wrong word. It's in the one that goes "A person having any exposed sub-epidermal..." Note that one of the problems is persons that have "other legions." So, if you're going to use the public pool, leave your army behind, or at least, keep them out of sight. The proper word, of course, is lesions.