A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
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Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#2Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#3Ahh, one of my pet peeves! I like and use the Oxford comma in my emails but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one.
Here’s an English SE question with some interesting answers: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412/should-i-put....
Here’s Another answer with great visual illustration of the strippers, JFK, and Stalin example: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/172671/oxford-co....
My other sensibilities include not putting two spaces at sentence end (among other things this shows that you’re most probably 40+) and writing PowerPoint slide titles in sentence case rather than title case.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#4Ahh, one of my pet peeves! I like and use the Oxford comma in my emails but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one. Here’s an English SE question with some interesting answers: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412/should-i-put... . Here’s Another answer with great visual illustration of the strippers, JFK, and Stalin example: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/172671/oxford-co... . M…
>My other sensibilities include not putting two spaces at sentence end (among other things this shows that you’re most probably 40+)
That's a silly generalization. I'm only 39.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#5Ahh, one of my pet peeves! I like and use the Oxford comma in my emails but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one. Here’s an English SE question with some interesting answers: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412/should-i-put... . Here’s Another answer with great visual illustration of the strippers, JFK, and Stalin example: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/172671/oxford-co... . M…
> but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one.
The desire to make sentences unambiguous seems to be very rare, so this isn't too surprising.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#6Why, 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 ?
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#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 lot of discussion about how it can be misinterpreted, it's just a bad sentence. I think instead of debating about Oxford commas as a band aid, you should restructure the sentence so most people will understand it first time without having to think too hard.
This feels similar to overly clever code which goes against the principle of least surprise that shouldn't pass code review.
“The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce over rice and broccoli salad, followed by bread pudding with chocolate sauce.”
Edit: Fair point that the dessert is clear now but not the main. Either way, I'd prefer restructuring the sentence to make it clearer where practical e.g. adding in a few extra words like "with a side of", "dessert", "followed by".
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#8Many people use the Oxford comma in every case because they don’t trust their own judgement about ambiguity. That’s always struck me as pretty lazy, despite proponents insisting it’s some sort of principled stance.
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#9Ahh, one of my pet peeves! I like and use the Oxford comma in my emails but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one. Here’s an English SE question with some interesting answers: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412/should-i-put... . Here’s Another answer with great visual illustration of the strippers, JFK, and Stalin example: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/172671/oxford-co... . M…
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).
Re: A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
#10personally, 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..