Comments on: the battle of the serial comma

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 12:33:04 +0000

The problem isn’t that the serial comma should be wiped from the face of the Earth entirely; As it was mentioned before, the serial comma should be excluded EXCEPT WHERE NEEDED TO AVOID CONFUSION. Are we such sheep that we need to have one rule that is all encompassing so we don’t have to use our brains? Isn’t the “I before E except after C” subject to it’s own weird exceptions? And as far as these American authorities; Who exactly are they, and why to they have a love affair with a redundant piece of punctuation? German authorities, once upon a time, believed that genocide was a real GOOD idea, but we’ve come to refute that idea too.

By: John Thacker

John Thacker — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:50:03 +0000

American authorities, with the exception of newspaper style guides such as the AP style book, have always strongly recommended the serial comma and continue to do so.

British authorities tend to recommend omitting it or having it optional, with the exception of the Oxford University Press, which requires it. (Hence the serial comma is sometimes known as the “Oxford comma.”)

Both styles can cause ambiguities, but in general omitting it causes more ambuguities; as the aforementioned apocryphal “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”

By: Bonny

Bonny — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 18:11:31 +0000

WHAT’S THIS I HEAR about hating the cereal comma? Why, if we didn’t have the cereal coma, who would buy Honey, Nuts & Oats??

Emily L.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 17:39:33 +0000

I was taught to omit the last comma unless needed to eliminate ambiguity. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd edition (p. 588), says the “more usual way of punctuating … an enumeration … is French, German, Italian and Spanish: the commas between French and German and German and Italian take the place of ands; there is no comma after Italian because, with and, it would be otiose.” Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition, Fourth Course (p. 379) says “When the last two items in a series are joined by and, you may omit the comma before the and if the comma is not necessary to make the meaning clear.”

The rule mkh suggests – put a comma where you would pause when speaking – works well, even for the counterexamples suggested by pankwindu, Don and Mark. Jon Hanemann’s rule is also helpful: use a serial comma when any of the items in a series are separated by “and.” (It seems to me that mkh’s rule would handle those cases as well). Superfluous serial commas always look to me like they were put there by writers not completely comfortable with the English language.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 02 Sep 2003 14:40:35 +0000

I see, and do you have any references that are after 1950?

I’m sure if you search hard enough you’ll find all sorts of rules about men’s hats, a lady’s curtsey, the proper usage of “hoy, hoy” when answering a telephone, the spelling of “potatoe” and other such useless bit archaism.

While it’s true that research does not lie, liars do reasearch.

Also, there is no “checkmate” when it comes to opinions and personal preferences, no matter how very sad and wrong you are.