Friday Funnies: The Importance of the Serial Comma

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

We've covered our friend the Oxford comma more than once: in 2008 with A Very Special Comma and as a Blast from the Past earlier this year.

But if those articles weren't enough to convince you, there's this cartoon from Tumblr user Lush-mana.

Comments

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

I posted this once on Facebook, and most people, even after rereading it multiple times, don't understand it -- at all!

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

It took me 3 times to recognize that as a great example of the comma's importance in an appositive phrase. And how long it's been since I've even SEEN an appositive phrase.

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

As a retired English teacher, I got it the first time, but I'm a grammar/punctuation/diction freak who sees any mistake no matter how tiny -- always. I edit and am known as The Fairy Godmother of Verbal Usage/FGoVU.

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

So if we put you in a room with a linguistic descriptivist, there'd be fireworks?

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

Well . . . it depends on the setting in which the writing or speaking is taking place. I, myself, am very precise; I always have been. If one can turn off and on colloquial language/writing at need, peachy with a side order of keen. I don't speak German those who don't speak it nor English to Germans with no facility in that language. There are times for particular types of communication. Unfortunately, most people really can't "switch-hit," and a lot of what Professor Henry Higgins says in "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak" is sadly true. The ability to speak truly well, or the lack thereof, can be either a help or a hindrance in life. And no -- no fireworks. A calm, intelligent discussion.

[alicambs.livejournal.com]

I was taught not to use a comma after and in a list. I would therefore write 'We invited Stalin, JFK and the strippers.'

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

That is one way around it, but the serial comma is (as Em's article notes) a perfectly legitimate construction. I had a boss who hated it, though, we could only use it if we were keeping Stalin and JFK away from the strippers.

[dimity-blue.livejournal.com]

ROFL! That is completely awesome. :oD

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

It kind of is.