Sunday, March 27, 2011

Write It Right ~ I believe in commas!


Whoever designed this cover needs to study grammar.  The "EAT, RAY, LOVE" part is a cutesy attempt to play on the title of Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (I think the book's title has no commas, which is incorrect).  Thanks to Chrisbookarama, I learned:  "A missing comma makes Rachael Ray a cannibal."
Cannibal version:
"Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog."
With commas added:
"Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking, her family, and her dog."
Words or phrases in a series of three or more need commas between each item, as I've done in the second line.  In the first line, she is "cooking her family" and "cooking her dog."  In the corrected version, she "finds inspiration in cooking" and "finds inspiration in her family" and "finds inspiration in her dog."

To be fair, I went to the Tails, Inc. web site and found a post saying the cover shown above was photoshopped.  Here's their original October 2010 cover, according to this site:

2 comments:

Chrisbookarama said...

It was too good to be true! Pretty funny though.

Bonnie Jacobs said...

VERY funny, and worth writing about, even though the magazine says it was photoshopped. This is the kind of thing that happens when people don't use commas correctly -- or at all.