Petey's
Pipeline E-zine
Issue #40
October 16, 2006
Contents
Business
First November
Time-out
Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings
National Security— Safe
or Sorry
Write Thinking Punctuation
– the Marks of Professionals (the Comma, Part II)
Business
First (Editorial)
November
Time-out
Because
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), this issue
of Petey's Pipeline E-zine is smaller than usual, a condition
made necessary by my preparations to engage in a third consecutive
attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Factors beyond
my control reduced previous attempts to reach that goal to brief
exercises in futility. This year, my computer is off limits
to all worms and viruses, and family members and close friends
are forbidden to die between now and December 1st. Don't even
try it!
There will be no issues published in November. The next full
issue publishes on December 18th, but I'm planning to put out
a short update issue on December 4th. In the meantime, mid-term
elections are coming up on November 7th; don't forget to vote.
What? Not registered to vote? There may still be time, but you'll
have to hurry.
Have
a safe and fun Halloween and a happy Thanksgiving. See you in
December.
• • •
For
an occasional dose of insight and opinion, read Petey's
Pipeline Blog.
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Let's not defeat that purpose by being hasty or becoming careless.
Random
Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings
National
Security—Safe or Sorry
National
security is far more complicated than just keeping the country
safe from terrorists. It also involves having comprehensive
disaster-coping strategies in place before the fact, maintaining
functional social infrastructures, adopting sane environmental
protection laws, developing long-term renewable energy resources,
and providing food and water security for the entire population.
On
December 18th, I'll begin a multiple-part series dealing with
national security concerns that largely seem to have been forgotten
in our rush to terrorize Iraq. First up is an article dealing
with food security and the things we need to do to ensure an
ample, nutritious food supply for decades to come. I'll follow
up in subsequent issues with articles relating to other aspects
of national security.
Sure,
there's going to be plenty of business opportunities for creative,
enterprising entrepreneurs, but maybe the most important things
you'll get out of this are ideas to help ensure your own survival.
See
you in mid-December!
Copyright
© 2006 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
Write
Thinking
Punctuation – the Marks of Professionals
Getting
punctuation right is critical to making your writing intelligible
and coherent. As with misspelled and misused words, misused
or missing punctuation takes your message off track and confuses
your readers. To help you avoid the avoidable, the next few
installments of Write Thinking deal with punctuation
marks, in all their many forms, with example sentences provided
for clarification.
The
Comma (,), Part II of IV
•
Commas set apart a nonrestrictive clause, which adds information
about the word it modifies but is not essential to sentence
meaning.
The
CEO, who is only 42, had a heart attack this morning.
•
A restrictive clause completes sentence meaning and is never
set apart by commas.
The
acting CEO who came from a regional office has taken charge.
Use
a comma to separate:
•
A word in opposition when it identifies or defines another word
with a noun.
Dave,
her bodyguard, is highly trained.
Her bodyguard, Dave, is highly trained.
•
Words indicating direct address.
Please
close the door, Max.
Max, please close the door.
•
A series of words, phrases or clauses.
The
job demands intelligence, speed, accuracy and efficiency.
They
dived into the water, swam across the river, and raced along
the opposite bank.
If the merger goes through, it means that we retain our market
share, they get two new product lines, and we all make more
money.
•
Coordinate adjectives that modify the same noun if the word
can can be substituted for the comma.
The
older, heavier weapons will be a liability in close-quarters
combat.
The
newer assault rifles will be an advantage in close-quarters
combat.
(No
comma in the second example because it's improper to say,
"newer and assault")
More
about comma useage in the next issue (Dec. 4th).
Copyright
© 2006 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
Disclaimer
The
articles appearing in Petey's Pipeline E-zine are based on information
believed to be true at the time of publication.
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