User:SolarEquinox/Menu/Colon

Just the article

Notes

Should be written in style of a Bio textbook, perhaps?

Basic

- organ of grammatical regulation

Diseases

- British people less susceptible to colon disease (uppercrust) but affected more harshly if contracted (Cockney)

- degenerative colon disease (DCD) affects punctuation and grammar: lack of commas, periods, etc., causes run-on sentences and words that don't hyphenate at the end of lines, split infinitives, dangling prepositions, and so on

- remedy for DCD is colonic water (bitter, fizzy... ha!)

- cancer = multiplication of cells, so colon cancer is multiplication of punctuation (excessive apostrophes, commas, etc.)

- BAD PUN WARNING: the reason colon cancer affects the actual punctuation, and not the cells, is because [link 'sex' to Testicles (i.e., testicular cancer)] and [link 'violence' to something cancer-related that can also go along with violence (but what?)] cell better than the colon.

- contraction of colon cancer results in improper contraction of words (some sort of contraction (disease)/contraction (words) pun)

- colon cancer can be treated with commatherapy

- observations of people with DCD and colon cancer (diseases affect both speech and writing - don't ask how the speech part is known; it just is)

- colon cancer usually manifests itself in the form of excessive apostrophes. For example, a cancer patient was recently observed saying [example, full of misplaced apostrophes that make lots of things possessive]. Doctors have yet to determine whether he was simply contracting too frequently, or whether he was confused as to whom the [major noun of the example, i.e. dog] belonged.

- diarrhea = violent expulsions of apostrophes over a short period?

- accents somehow produced from irritation of colon

Oxford comma

- Oxford comma - a vestigial function of the colon

verbatim from notes:

Oxford comma gets its name from being used only before "and Oxford" in a list, i.e.:

Kingston, Cambridge, and Oxford are universities in England.

BUT

LSD, marijuana and kittens are potentially harmful drugs.

Grammatologists later rules that Oxford was not special enough to receive its own comma, and the Oxford comma is now only used by people born before the change was implemented (as such, their colon was not evolved to ignore this rule). This means there are those who use the Oxford comma, but they are generally senile and are ignored anyway.

Evolutionary grammologists cite the vestigial Oxford comma as a major piece of evidence in their arguments.

Creationary grammologists maintain it was put there by God to challenge us and so He can get a laugh from confusing numerous generations with the question of whether or not to use it.

Note: Evolutionary/Creationist grammatology may be pushing it too far. But try, at least.

Oh yeah, and: if evol./crea. gram. are used, The Elements of Style, White and Strunk, can be a pro-evolutionary grammatology pamphlet.

Grammatology

Grammatologists are people who majored in English before realizing that this degree can only be used for becoming teachers or writers for the New York Times Book Review, if lucky. They then studied biology in graduate school and put their past experience to use studying the intricate functionings of the colon.

The Article (this is not a headline in the actual article; delete when done)

“I am most certainly not a dildo collector.”

~ Kenneth Branagh on dildos

What is the colon?

The colon is considered one of the most important and interesting organs in the human body. It is the organ that regulates the usage of grammar and punctuation in human speech. Scientists, linguists and that hybrid of both known as 'grammatologists' have contended that without the colon, society as we know it would cease to exist. Why do they say this? Let us look more closely at the functioning of the colon and its place in our bodies to understand.

Function

The colon's function in the body is to produce the necessary parts for proper punctuation usage, including commas (,), semicolons (;), parentheses (()) and hyphens (-). It also constructs grammatically correct sentences, following accepted rules of syntax such as not dangling modifiers or prepositions in front of a kitten and then pulling them away, because that's just teasing them. Winston Churchill's well-known rebuke of "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put" is frequently cited by grammatologists as being evidence of a perfectly functional colon; one of the sort to which we all should aspire.

The Oxford comma

The Oxford comma is a vestigial section of the colon that specifically controlled the usage of its grammatical counterpart, also known as "the Oxford comma." The grammatical Oxford comma gets its name from being used only before "[...]and Oxford" in a sequence. For example:

“Kingston, Cambridge, and Oxford are universities in England.”

~ Some Guy on Kingston, Cambridge, and Oxford

BUT

“Among the highlights of President Bush's recent visit to England were his meeting with Kenneth Branagh, the last member of a centuries-old family and an avid dildo collector.”

~ Newscaster on President Bush's recent visit to England

This section of the colon causes much debate among the grammatology community. In the 1930s, early grammatologists ruled that Oxford was not special enough to receive its own comma, thus reducing the Oxford comma's effective usefulness to roughly nothing. In following generations, grammatologists found that the Oxford comma had quickly gone the way of the appendix. Strangely, even though the Oxford comma is not used, its function has been assimilated into the normal colon in a biological equivalent of a low-priority process. We can use the Oxford comma; however, it is not automatic. We must consider whether or not to use it when the opportunity arises. The only truly functional Oxford commas left (and thus, the only ones that still produce the comma) are in people born before the change was implemented and so their colon had not evolved to phase the Oxford comma into inactivity. These people still use the Oxford comma; however, they are also senile and should be ignored.

Evolutionary grammalogists cite the Oxford comma as a major piece of evidence in their arguments, stating that it is proof positive that bodies ^[1] change over time. ^[2] Creationary evolutionists, on the other hand, maintain it was put there by God for two reasons: 1) to challenge us and our beliefs, and 2) to get a laugh out of confusing numerous generations over whether or not to use the Oxford comma.

Footnotes

1. ^  This only applies to humans, as other organisms do not appear to have colons.
2. ^  For more information, see The Elements of Style, Strunk, William, Jr. and White, E. B.