Run For Your Lives!
I have come to you today a man on a mission. No scratch that, a Crusade to end a dastardly plot to rob us of our bodily fluids not equaled in its cunning or maliciousness since the Soviets fluoridated our water. Yes ladies and gentlemen this scourge to all things pure and sacred looks harmless enough but the damage it does silently every day is beyond repair. Yes, I'm talking about the Oxford comma!
Those saucy Brits at Oxford have been slowly insinuating themselves into the minds of decent people everywhere compelling them to add a comma before and in a list of three or more. They must be stopped I tell you.
I went to the Chicago Manual of Style at work yesterday; this should have been clear from the beginning because it's orange and from Chicago and every one knows nothing stylish ever comes in orange or from Chicago. There it was the Oxford comma. An optional punctuation that they had the audacity to insist upon based on the reasoning that it might someday avoid some sort of ambiguity. As though and does not clearly signal that the list is coming to an end. If there are lots of ands and ors and such a comma is always called for when it aids in the clarity of the sentence.
Like when couples go out:
Jim and Angie, Bill and Bob, and Andie and I went out to dinner.
Now there's an Oxford comma I can get behind.
But;
I went to the store for eggs, milk and pasta.
Sorry not sure what's unclear here. If milk and pasta were some sort of group I'd need another and.
When I checked their source guess what I found. Yep. You guessed it. Oxford.
On the other hand,
Pirate, a blogger, and I went to lunch.
How many people are at the table? Can't tell, can you?
I tell you my friends we stand on the Eve of Destruction. Call your Senator! Write the President...(wait... this is about the English language - better skip the President. He's confused enough already.) Take action now to save your children's future. The Oxford comma, that insideous grammatical cancer, is festering in our national consciousness.
1 comment:
I can't understand why all the fuss after all commas aren't really that important are they?
In German the comma use is stranger yet. You might say something like this:
"He imagines, how good he would look in that suit."
Somehow when you speak German these oddities don't seem odd, but translated they sound weird.
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