D A M M I T!
I just wrote a 15 page essay on the serial comma for a linguistics study I’m doing, and now this! I’m gonna have to talk to my advisor about this one.
/grammarNerdOff
The horror is upon us.
Today’s lazy people no longer care about grammar(and darn little aboute grampa)!
Indiana has decided not to require cursive writing in school . But then I see more and more people who turn on a computer ,bring up Word, and then retrieve the printout from down the hall ,rather than sim,ply jot a brief note on a pad.
Stupid idea. ‘a, b and c’ implies that ‘b and c’ together constitute some combined set that is analagous to the set a. ‘a,b, and c’ denotes three seperate sets that are each analagous to the other two.
I couldn’t sleep at night, worrying about dropping the comma years ago, hoping I would never get called on the carpet by my editor. Oh, what a relief, it is.
The comma: Always a hot topic in the Publication’s world - I had to get cured of my excessive comma abuse many years ago - now I hardly ever use them - hyphens and dashes are like Methodone to me now..........
Apples, oranges, and pears.
Apples and oranges, pens and pencils, and cakes and pies.
I learned to drop the comma before the word “and” while in college journalism courses. Of course, this was contrary to my previous writing education that used the Oxford serial rule so it was a hard convention to break. Later, in graduate school, I had to re-learn the serial comma when using APA style for writing course papers. My right middle finger gets twitchy now when typing any serial list.
I have used the Oxford comma my entire life (never knew it had a name though) and will continue too regardless of what Oxford thinks about it.
This comma use change will not shake the foundation of language. I will certainly divide “wonks” on what is correct for the next 50 years. I will be long dead before this change is so entrenched that it is in 100% use. I think it may NEVER be in use, people propagate what they learned, and I learned the serial comma. Most English professors and teachers will stick with what they know. Serial comma will be learned for a long time.
Well screw Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard.
I am so glad I’m not an editor or an English major..I would be on anxiety meds.
I would suppose that the comma after the word, bargaining, would be proper, as the words are not related. But if they were related, like in 'anger and despair, you don't need the comma.
I'm a comma abuser but I pair the last two items sans comma as the American response to British tyranny.
somebody has too much time on their hands...
I was always taught never to use a serial comma, and never have. Glad to see the People Who Are In Charge Of Such Things came around to my way of thinking. :D
That said, unneeded punctuation can lead to grammatical aberrations such as: “Angry constituents told United States Senator, Harry Reid, to go jump in the lake.”
Eschew unneeded commas. Your keyboard will thank you.
They came and took away the commas but i did nothing because I wrote run-on sentences and had no need to separate my thoughts and ideas so my pillow is very comfortable. Then they took away the period but I did nothing because I only twittered - then they took away capitalization but i did nothing because i was a fan of a a milne butnowtheyhavetakenawaymyspacekeyandthereisnoonetohelpme
Going on geek overdrive...(warning, C++ ahead)
Comma operator ( , )
The comma operator (,) is used to separate two or more expressions that are included where only one expression is expected. When the set of expressions has to be evaluated for a value, only the rightmost expression is considered.
For example, the following code:
a = (b=3, b+2);
Would first assign the value 3 to b, and then assign b+2 to variable a. So, at the end, variable a would contain the value 5 while variable b would contain value 3.
I personally have never used the “Oxford comma”.