Metaglossia: The Translation World

The celebrated sage Yogi Berra, referring to the many aphorisms apocryphally attributed to him, once observed, “I really didn’t say everything I said.” One of the things he really did say (according to the reliable Yale Book of Quotations) is, “You can observe a lot by watching.” I will modify that as follows: “You can learn a lot by just writing.”

Inspiring that thought was a piece I wrote for The New York Times last week, the second of two on commas. The first installment drew a lot of reaction, but it was as nothing compared with this one. As I write, it’s the No. 1 most e-mailed story on the Times site for both the past seven days and the past 30 days; it generated 697 comments, before comments were closed.