{"id":436,"date":"2008-12-03T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/due-to-the-graphic-nature-of-this-program-viewer\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T19:45:58","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:45:58","slug":"due-to-the-graphic-nature-of-this-program-viewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/due-to-the-graphic-nature-of-this-program-viewer\/","title":{"rendered":"“Due to the graphic nature of this program viewer …”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw this at the beginning of a television program a few days ago.<\/p>\n

Problem:<\/strong>
\nA comma is missing.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\nThe TV program on truTV<\/a> was titled “World’s Wildest Police Videos”.<\/p>\n

The complete warning appeared in all-capital letters at the beginning of the program: “DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE OF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.”<\/p>\n

A line break appeared after the word “NATURE”, and another line break appeared after the word “VIEWER”, so the warning was formatted as follows:<\/p>\n

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE
\nOF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER
\nDISCRETION IS ADVISED.<\/p>\n

My first reaction to this warning was, “What is a PROGRAM VIEWER?”<\/p>\n

Some sign and warning writers mistakenly claim that they can insert line breaks where commas should occur and therefore that a comma is unnecessary with these implied-comma line breaks.<\/p>\n

If the warning writer for “World’s Wildest Police Videos” had followed that rule, then he or she would have created a warning that would have been formatted with a line break between “PROGRAM” and “VIEWER”:<\/p>\n

DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE
\nOF THIS PROGRAM
\nVIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.<\/p>\n

But whoever entered the text for the warning screen could not even claim that he or she was using an implied comma between the word “PROGRAM” and the word “VIEWER”.<\/p>\n

I believe that the warning writer was unaware of a basic principle about commas, which is that they indicate pauses. I otherwise could not explain how the writer could have read the warning aloud and not noticed that a comma was missing after the word “PROGRAM”.<\/p>\n

Solution:<\/strong>
\n“Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer …”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw this at the beginning of a television program a few days ago. Problem: A comma is missing. Explanation: The TV program on truTV was titled “World’s Wildest Police Videos”. The complete warning appeared in all-capital letters at the beginning of the program: “DUE TO THE GRAPHIC NATURE OF THIS PROGRAM VIEWER DISCRETION IS…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commas"],"yoast_head":"\n"Due to the graphic nature of this program viewer ..." - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/due-to-the-graphic-nature-of-this-program-viewer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Due to the graphic nature of this program viewer ..." - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I saw this at the beginning of a television program a few days ago. 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