A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#71

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC

cafard wrote: post #69

CamperBob2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to misread the Second Amendment is to assume that it, alone among the other amendments in the original Bill of Rights, was written to constrain the people rather than the government. In other words, you have to approach the question with an agenda -- and a conclusion -- already in mind. Bad for intellectual honesty regardless of how you feel about gun ownership rights.

Which government? Two states still had established churches when the First Amendment took effect.

If the framers hadn't felt the First Amendment to be necessary, based on their awareness of both classical and all-too-recent history, they wouldn't have bothered including it. Arguably the same is true for the Second Amendment.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#72

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

smegsicle wrote: post #10

personally, i generally find the absence of an oxford comma slightly jarring even without any ambiguity issue- i feel it matches the way i read and speak (midwest en-us) conversely, i only use semicolons in javascript when required..

[deleted]

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#73

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #64

jonas21 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still ambiguity as to whether it's: (pan-roasted oysters) with (a tomato sauce over rice) or: (pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce) over rice

I don't think there is. It is the second. The clear convention is that each meal item is a list element.

It's not clear to me.

> (pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce) over rice

I picture a bowl of rice, then oysters on top of the rice, and then tomato sauce poured on top of the oysters.

> (pan-roasted oysters) with (a tomato sauce over rice)

I picture a plate. On one half is oysters, the other half is rice with tomato sauce poured on it.

As someone who would never put tomato sauce on either oysters or rice, either are equally likely.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#74

Post by philovivero » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #62

bcatanzaro wrote: post #42

The commas in the second Amendment and their meaning are probably worth Trillions of dollars. When you think of all the private arms and all the costs of gun violence in the US over the years which hinge on the individual right to bear arms, when punctuation in the second amendment can lead people to read the text as only holding a right to bear arms within a well-regulated Militia. Turns out that the commas weren’t…

The only way to misread the Second Amendment is to assume that it, alone among the other amendments in the original Bill of Rights, was written to constrain the people rather than the government. In other words, you have to approach the question with an agenda -- and a conclusion -- already in mind. Bad for intellectual honesty regardless of how you feel about gun ownership rights.

This sort of sanity in interpreting written texts is disallowed on this forum.

Here, guns are bad. The second amendment was meant to take away guns from the people and allow them only for the government, specifically, the armed forces.

This is because here, we love tyranny, and are rather tired of the uppity flyover staters who are holding it back.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#75

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #59

skulk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explanation you linked is a whole lot of words, and after reading it I am less sure of what I thought the Second Amendment means than ever. Its meaning is anything but obvious. I say this because there is nothing about self-defense in the text of the Second Amendment, and yet the SCOTUS has held that self-defense is one of the rights that cannot be infringed. It's not at all obvious how a statement about the nec…

Well, we are talking about a body that finds the constitution protects privacy, even though CTRL-F 'privacy' has zero results. I am not saying they are right or wrong, but any pretense that the courts rule based on the text of the law should be discarded. The reality is they find rights and laws that seem reasonable to their own selves, and disregard precedent that is poorly argued (ie they don't like the result). Th…

I'd argue the 4th Amendment gives you a right to privacy from the government.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#76

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:16 PM UTC

tomjakubowski wrote: post #33

sudobash1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if programmers use the Oxford comma more than the general population. It just feels more consistent to me to have all items delineated with commas (or semicolon if items contain commas: http://sana.aalto.fi/awe/punctuation/semicolons/02.html ).

It's not consistent, though. Nobody uses the Oxford comma in a list of two. In the Oxford regime, "apples and oranges", when prefixed with another fruit, becomes "bananas, apples, and oranges". If you wanted to implement an "insert commas" algorithm recursively, choosing Oxford requires passing an extra bit along to signal to the terminal case (joining the last two list elements) that there are > 2 elements total. In…

If I say out lout "bananas, apples, and oranges", then I have a slight pause between each item in the list and the comma represents that pause.

I say "bananas (pause) apples (pause) and oranges". I do not say "bananas (pause) apples and oranges".

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#77

Post by cgriswald » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:27 PM UTC

jrms wrote: post #39

seanwilson wrote: post #7

> “The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce over rice, broccoli salad and bread pudding with chocolate sauce.” A comma after “broccoli salad” would have cleared the table before dessert. I think if you write a sentence that's highly dependent on the reader paying careful attention to where an easy-to-miss comma is, you assume all readers know what Oxford commas are, and the sentence generates a…

I would write "... and bread pudding with chocolate sauce as desert."

If a reader didn't know what bread pudding was, they could conclude that you had just chocolate sauce for your desert.

Trying to write English like you write code is pointless. It's edge cases all the way down and there aren't any shortcuts for gathering them all up except to assume a certain level of intelligence in your reader. Writers should focus on elegant, easy-to-read text that expresses their thoughts and the relevant details in a manner their main audience can understand.

I agree with the top-level commenter that the Oxford comma is used where a rephrasing may be better. Of course, most phrases can be better written, so it's largely meaningless. The Oxford comma is concise and unreasonably effective. It eases reading and should be adopted universally.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#78

Post by cgriswald » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #66

robocat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parentheses are way better than em-dashes for parenthetical remarks. A set of parentheses make the syntax unambiguous. An em-dash is “that multifaceted, all-purpose punctuation mark that can act as a parenthesis, comma, colon, semicolon or even quotation mark”. Also I have spent too much time with computer languages, and I personally find the lack of spacing around the parenthetical em-dash to be an ugly syntax. Then…

Functionally, I guess the only advantage that the em-dash has is that it fails loudly and miserably when nested. For example: Parentheticals -- already a bad -- although sometimes unavoidable -- habit of mine -- should never be nested. Completely incomprehensible. Parentheticals (already a bad (although sometimes unavoidable) habit of mine) should never be nested. Dangerously comprehensible. However, em-dashes do mak…

> However, em-dashes do make the reading voice in my head change over to an old-timey radio announcer so that is cool.

That is cool.

When I read a parenthetical in parentheses it's like someone is talking to me while I'm trying to watch a movie: Even if the information is useful, it's annoyingly distracting. The same parenthetical in em-dash form doesn't have this same effect on me.

However—and I hope you'll bear with me here—for the most part the information in a parenthetical is either not needed or important enough to justify its own complete sentence.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#79

Post by SilasX » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

jkubicek wrote: post #26

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Why, commas not withstanding, should Maine prevent people in the food supply chain business from getting overtime. I am pinko-Euro-liberal and even I think that's government meddling. Is there a historic reason for this if just labour-bashing ?

> Lest we lose perspective, this law on the books of the State of Maine applies to people who work with perishable foods, and the point is that pokey employees should not be rewarded for taking their sweet time getting the goods to market.

You could penalize that without penalizing those that work long hours for legitimate reasons.

Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)

#80

Post by seanwilson » Tue, Dec 21, 2021, 11:59 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #60

sixothree wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't semicolons the correct english list separator?

That's another argument in itself. I was always taught that phrases set apart by semicolons need to be capable of standing alone as complete sentences, so it's jarring to see them used to delimit nouns or noun phrases in a list. At the same time, the language clearly needs a comma-like operator with higher precedence than the comma, and it's very hard to argue against pressing the semicolon into that role.

> At the same time, the language clearly needs a comma-like operator with higher precedence than the comma,

When a bulleted list is too much, I usually fall back on 1) this thing 2) this, this and this other thing and 3) this final thing. Gives you an easy way to refer back to each item too. Bit stuffy for causal writing though.