Posted on 07/22/2011 10:38:30 AM PDT by nickcarraway
hangin head in shame....
Exactly! I always used a comma in that space. The dumbing down of the planet continues in earnest.
Dropping the comma before ‘and’ has been allowable for 40 years — depending on which usage guide one uses. It isn’t a new concept.
Lawyers for one thing are very particular about commas. A comma used or not used can very significantly change the interpretation of a contract for one example.
Gratuitously deleting the final comma in a series is yet another example of what I decribe as, Greshem’s Law of Grammar: Bad grammar drives out the good.
Despite decades of witnessing the horror of the new usage, even in newer school grammar books, I’ve never brought myself to follow this clearly foolish trend that obfiscates meaning. Oxford should maintain the King’s English rather than defer to the devolutionary grammar of the colonies.
Reading the Oxford decision, I haven’t felt this linguistically betrayed since the U.S. debut of the ubiquitous, long-running, grammatically-influential advertising jarring ditty, “Winston tastes good, like [sic] a cigarette should.”
Kicking out the clarifying, parallel comma is kicking out a supporting wall of Western civilization.
“How did Oxford come to own the comma in the first place ?”
They agreed to renounce the use of the tilde and umlaut, and traded two semi-quavers for it in the early years of the twentieth century, in an obscure clause of the Balfour Declaration. Like so many things in history, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Amen. That’s exactly what I posted. What a bunch of noisey bodies with nothing better to do. Wow...
I never used, nor do I use now, a comma before the "and".
For instance, I write, "I love oranges, apples and pears.".....or..... "Bill O'Reilly is a socialist, liberal, progressive, populist and statist gas bag."
Many moons ago I borrowed exclamation points from freeper Pete Kessler, and though I have used them profusely, abundantly and frequently over the years I still have many left. I LUV exclamation points! Thanks, Pete!
Punctuation marks, like paragraphs, are our friends!!!
Leni !
I find that comma to be unneeded personally.
Eats, shoots & leaves.
Com-ma, com-ma, down doobie-doo-down-down.
Breakin' up is hard to do.
[Neil Sedaka, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.]
Comma comma comma comma comma chameleon.....
Duly noted. However, the link goes to the video of a song called “Oxford Comma”...(grin)
I’ve heard that the umlaut and the goose step march are somehow related...
“Eats shoots, and leaves.”
Was the song about a lawyer? Was I even close? LOL!
OK, everybody! Put down the dictionary and nobody gets hurt!
Wish I could understand the lyrics better. The video itself was great. Lots of neat things going on there and no cutaways.
And to answer your question....hey, TC!
Forget about grammar! Have you heard newspeople saying “pitcher” instead of “picture”? This one is happening all over the place.
Or how about this?
I model my life on my parents, the pope and Mother Teresa. :-)
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