sometimes he got religion

[dragonlady7]

So I sent Dave a link to this post wherein the dude who does the dinosaur comics discovers that pop songs as itemized lists are funny (I saw that link, btw, in jonquil's journal, where she applies it to the Barenaked Ladies' If I Had A Million Dollars). (And yes, there is an entire community devoted to this now.)

Dave's response, oddly enough, was to adapt the format to the Nicene Creed.

We believe in:

• One God


• One Lord, Jesus Christ


• One Church
  
  
  • Holy
  
  
  • Catholic
  
  
  • Apostolic

I can honestly say I'd never have thought of that. But then, I've never been to seven Masses in one week.
Edited to Add:
All right, I decided to get serious and do up the whole Creed. Here's looking at you, nested unordered lists!!


We believe in:

• One God
  
  • the Father
  • the Almighty
  • Maker of:
    
    • heaven and earth
    • all that is seen
    • and unseen
  
  



• One Lord
  
  • Jesus Christ
  • the only Son of God
  • eternally begotten from the Father
    
    
    • God from God
    • Light from Light
    • true God from true God
    • begotten, not made
    • one in being with the Father
    
    
  
  
  • He:
    
    
    • came down from heaven
    • was born of the Virgin Mary
    • became man
    • was crucified under Pontius Pilate
    • suffered
    • died
    • was buried
    • rose again
    • ascended into heaven
    • is seated at the right hand of the Father
    • will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
    
    
    • His kingdom:
      
      • will have no end
  
  



• The Holy Spirit
  
  • the Lord
  
  
  • the Giver of Life
  
  
  • Who proceeds from the Father
  
  
  • and the Son
  
  
  • with above, is worshipped and glorified
  
  
  • Has spoken through the prophets



• one church
  
  • holy
  • catholic
  • apostolic
  
  



• one baptism
  
  • for the forgiveness of sins
  
  


• the resurrection of the dead


• and the life of the world to come

Comments

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

Does it make me a bad Catholic that I couldn't get past the AP-style allowing sentence fragments before colons? (I ascribe to Chicago style, wherein all pre-colon lead-ins must be complete sentences and ... God. I'm a geek.)

List-making is good for the soul.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

...
*blinks*

I was always a bit of an English geek but I don't even know what you're talking about.

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

It's not really a grammer thing; it's about style. I take style a little too seriously.

In the Chicago Manual of Style (and most academic and professional styles), any list lead-in should have a complete sentence before the colon:

--> "The following are examples of kittens:"

Other styles allow writers to use just sentence fragments before the colon:

--> "Examples of kittens:"

Not surprisingly, my little peeve/joke went over like a lead balloon. Which makes me a very dorky editor geek. *blush*

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

And the writers of the Nicene Creed disobeyed this?
Oh dear. God's in trouble...

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

(er, it occurs to me that I'm not managing to convey the fact that I am in no mental state to get what you were talking about, as I am both distracted and confused. But my problem was more that I couldn't figure out whether you were objecting to the lists or to the Creed.)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

upon reflection, the punctuation in the Creed's no treat either.


But this stylistic approach applies to outlines too?
Holy crap!
I'd never use a sentence fragment in something in a polished publishable sentence-based format, but for a list? Definitely. The whole point of the pop-songs-in-lists reformatting joke is that it's funny when it's just a list. (Click the link and read Jonquil's interpretation of BNL's $1,000,000.00-- it's exceedingly amusing in that format, and wouldn't be without the sentence fragments.)

See, I don't have a Chicago Vs. AP style thing, because I'm not that organized. I know both, and use whichever suits me. Which is probably dangerously heretical. What can I say! I'm a rebel, Dottie, a loner. And I punctuate by instinct. Gr-r-r-owl.

[(Anonymous)]

Pffft. (http://www.david.kleinschmidt.name/creed)

- Z