Friday Funnies: The Importance of the Serial Comma

[lady_ganesh]

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]

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

[campylobacter]

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]

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]

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

[alicambs]

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]

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]

ROFL! That is completely awesome. :oD

[lady_ganesh]

It kind of is.