Probably a Dumb Question
 

I am a baseball umpire who is helping coach a collegiate softball team this season and I just had an NCAA rules question.

With two outs and a runner of first, can the batter-runner advance to first on a dropped third strike?

I know you can in baseball, but the wording the NCAA rulebook seemed a bit confusing to me. Thanks in advance for your help.

Yes. And yes, their wording here is a little "hinky"

hinky = syntactically and grammatically faulty

NCCA wording:

When with two outs or fewer than two outs and first base is unoccupied, the catcher fails to catch a third strike before the ball touches the ground.

Correct wording:

When with two outs, or with fewer than two outs and first base unoccupied, the catcher fails to catch a third strike before the ball touches the ground.

Amazing how powerful, useful and effective a single comma is.

In another 10 years punctuation will be obsolete in ordinary daily written communications. Just consider the last 10 years - email to IM to text messaging - and what it has done to accepted syntax, spelling, and grammar of the written word.

I won't be long before teaching such things in our schools will be as obsolete as teaching Latin is now.

Just consider the last 10 years - email to IM to text messaging

The father of one of my daughter's friends called the cell phone company to find out why his bill was outrageously high. Customer service explained that it was the text messages that had been sent on his daughter's line. When he pointed out that he had purchased the "media package" option that covered a monthly 1,200 text messages, they informed him that his daughter had sent 2,093.

I've also had to caution my own daughter about going over her 1,200 limit. (The girls are best friends; I'm sure many of the messages are to and from each other.)

In a 30-day month, 2,093 text messages is almost 70 a day. I haven't seen any of the messages, but I strongly suspect that these girls don't open the "character map" to insert a comma when formal English requires one.

I've seen them send text messages. They open the phone, hit the keys with incredible speed, and send the message, all within a few seconds.

I agree with Dakota regarding the proper use of punctuation. Nothing upsets me more than not using the correct punctuation (now watch me goof up..)

As for the "art of texting", my 18 year old daughter wants to look at the cell phone bill each month to see if she "beat last month". Her record is.....8,000 text messages. Thank god we have unlimited text on our plan. My daughter's response to the abundance of texts??? "Well, atleast we are always below on our "anytime minutes"; gee, I wonder why?!?!?!

Her record is.....8,000 text messages.

In one month?

If so, that's 266 a day. That's about every waking hour. She's got my daughter and her friend beat hands down.

That was during the summer, with no school and no job. Just sitting at home on the computer; must be nice. Almost as good as a "dog's life", except she has to make her own breakfast and lunch.

My DD hit 3,000 one month, and this was during the school year and cell phones were supposedly banned in classrooms. "Banned" was more like "keep it on silent and no one cares." We did reach an "understanding" after that, however.

I had a plan on my DD's phone that was unlimited texting to anyone on the same carrier, but "only" 500 per month to others. Of course, her best texting buddy is on another carrier. After two months of 600 billable texts, she went unlimited all (for another $10/month).

Yep, when we text, she waits for me, because I understand how important punctutation is to proper understanding. It can often save 3 extra explanatory texts to be clear with one. But, then, that doesn't help you break any texting records.

I think my school has the same policy as Dakota's ("don't hear, don't see: don't care") in most classrooms. It has been handy to relay "Practice Cancelled" messages. My DD can't seem to hear announcements in the last period (Band), so when her Coach sent an e-mail today cancelling this afternoon's scrimmage, I texted that to my DD so that she would know. And called my wife (who doesn't even do e-mail. Sigh.)

I understand that for school use, kids set the ringer at a high frequency that kids can hear but adults can't.

The dumbing down of America s nothing new and it isn't all cell phones and IMs.

College students submit papers with spelling and punctuation that would not be accepted for someone my age when in the 4th grade.

It is atrocious and it is basically colleges giving up on trying to force the students to do it right.

Before you all tell me about how wrong I am, I have talked to parents who have complained to their students professors and the most response received were shrugged shoulders. My wife's nephew used my laptop to put together a paper. I've seen better spelling from my grand daughter. His parents told me it was the norm. This was confirmed by his older sister who graduated the same big time university in WalMartland.

Anybody remember the old Saturday Night Live routine (Belushi/Akroyd days) with the government flunky explaining the proposed switch to a leaner, more efficient "metric alphabet"?

The entire alphabet had been reduced to the ten most needed letters, thereby eliminating the need for such redundant consonants as "c" and "k" and creating a universal vowel to replace "a, e, i, o, u".

I think one of the new letters was something like "ell-emm-enn-oh-pee".

We seem to be heading in that direction!

That's a crock, it isn't the job of post 12 ed to teach these things.
Getting hung up on speeling and punctuation, ; is soooooo yesteday. these kids commo just fine, it's you that draws the old timey barriers. :(