Misplaced Comma Game

[Mini Mia]

Put the comma in the wrong place to change the meaning of a sentence.

[Mini Mia]

Babies eat poop, and cry.

[Trix]

What's that in the road, ahead?




(one of my all time favorites)

[Phalon]

Oh, oh, oh - can I tell a joke in here? I promise I won't screw up the punch-line.


A panda walks into a restaurant and orders a sandwich. After he eats it, he pulls out a pistol, fires it into the air, and moves to walk out the door without paying his bill.

The waiter exclaims, "Hey Panda! What the heck was that all about?"

The panda tosses him a dictionary, and says, "Look me up."

The waiter flips through the dictionary and finds the word Panda.

'panda: furry mammal who eats, shoots, and leaves.'


Misplaced commas are my forte: Whenever I pause typing - to think, get up from my desk, talk to whoever is interrupting me - whatever - I always end my typing unintentionally with a comma. Sometimes I catch myself; most often I do not. A reason to proof-read; I don't do it enough. I figure about half the commas in my posts are there because something in the refrigerator was calling my name and wouldn't shut up.

[Phalon]

This, from another web-site....

"NEW YORK, Sept 18 (Reuters Life!) - "Goats Cheese Salad ... tomatoes, onions, goats, cheese."

A misplaced comma in the list of ingredients gives diners a totally different dish -- and gives British writer Lynne Truss new ammunition in her campaign for the proper use of punctuation.

The author, who was totally stunned when her book on punctuation "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" became a British and U.S. hit, has set up a Web site (www.lynnetruss.com) that is collecting funny examples of wrongly used commas and apostrophes such as the above example.


Truss said she decided to start a collection as people were always approaching her with examples since the book came out in 2003.

"It seems I have ruined many lives by instilling in many more people the misery of always noticing these things," Truss told Reuters in a telephone interview on Monday.

"Having been a sub-editor and a proof reader, I do proof read everything I read and often find I am reading books to check them rather than read them. Any error just sits there and hurts you."

Truss, who was born in 1955 and lives in Brighton on England's south coast, said the success of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" in 2003 came as a complete surprise although she knew the book was original as she worked on it.

But she said it obviously struck a chord with other people who, like herself, were concerned that the move from print to electronic media was destroying prose with youngsters using text messaging and e-mail, and no longer focused on good writing style."

BTW, the joke in my prior post obviously came from Truss' book.