Joy is in the ears that hear

captainrobocop:

politicalprof:

The Oxford Comma: Not the solution to all our grammar problems…

Joe Kessler is my new favorite everything.

a) Thanks for the compliment, captainrobocop!

b) I had no idea someone had reposted my image and it was making the rounds again. I know some people on Tumblr get really upset by that (reposting an image instead of reblogging it from the original source), but I’m just delighted to learn that so many more people have seen this image. There are 116 posts on the original image, and 108 on this new one. I’m really happy that so many people have seen my argument and — for the most part — seem to have found it reasonable.

Now in handy infographic form!

musingsofabibliophile:

lesserjoke:

Eh. I tend to use the Oxford comma myself, but there’s a possibility for ambiguity either way. Consider:

1. We invited the stripper, JFK and Stalin.
2. We invited the stripper, JFK, and Stalin.

Sentence 1, without an Oxford comma, is clearly about three individuals. Sentence 2, which uses an Oxford comma, is ambiguous between that reading and one in which JFK is a stripper.

Basically: by all means use whichever convention you like, but don’t act like it removes ambiguity from your writing. It merely shifts that ambiguity to different sentences.

 I will agree there is still ambiguity, but think the pluralization of strippers makes it less ambiguous than your version. There is also the order in which they are placed; if “the strippers” had been the last noun in the sentence, there would be no ambiguity at all. That and JFK and Stalin as strippers is just hilarious.

1)      We invited JFK, Stalin, and the strippers.

2)      We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers.

Clearly at least four people in each sentence. Unless of course you want to argue that Stalin and the strippers are one group in themselves.

I also feel much of the ambiguity comes from having the list at the end of the sentence. If there had been some sort of setting given afterwards I think things would be far less vague.

1)      We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin to the party

2)      We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin to the party

3)      We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin, to the party

The appositive of JFK and Stalin in my third sentence guarantees that JFK and Stalin are the strippers; however, there is still a choice in the first of how many people exactly were invited. I also concede that in your second sentence, JFK can be considered an appositive.

That said, there are many ways to write almost any given sentence that alter the meaning just a smidge. Essentially language is entirely up to the reader to interpret because there are so many bizarre grammar and sentence structure combinations and guidelines to consider. There will always be ambiguity and room for improvement in (most) any written sentence. I don’t think there would be any ambiguity if the sentence was said aloud, as our pauses and inflections would explain everything away.  

I don’t even think ambiguity in language is necessarily a bad thing. The best argument I’ve heard for the Oxford comma, though, is that it more accurately maps spoken intonation to punctuation. (That is, it puts a comma in a spot where people do tend to pause in speech.) But the important point here is that both possibilities allow ambiguity.

invinciblend:

Okay, why is all this Oxford comma shit coming back around Tumblr??? Some of them are funny enough but they are based on linguistic peevery which is never a particularly stable foundation for anything (except becoming a douche who thinks they are honestly superior to other people because they never use ungainly passive constructions and cling desperately to Strunk & White when writing anything).

I’m not saying people who reblog it are necessarily taking it seriously, let alone being dicks like that, but I am so sick of it aaaa. And just, I thought we all got it out of our systems a few months ago and defiantly continued using Oxford commas because, er, there was never any reason to stop?

(Completely needless post but I deserve a place to vent too)

Like I posted earlier, there are ambiguities possible with an Oxford comma that are not possible without one, and there are other ambiguities possible without one that are not possible with. And all of that is only relevant if you think ambiguity in language is a bad thing in the first place, which I have yet to be convinced of!

Use whichever one you feel like, but please realize that it is no better or worse than the alternative.

Eh. I tend to use the Oxford comma myself, but there’s a possibility for ambiguity either way. Consider:

1. We invited the stripper, JFK and Stalin.
2. We invited the stripper, JFK, and Stalin.

Sentence 1, without an Oxford comma, is clearly about three individuals. Sentence 2, which uses an Oxford comma, is ambiguous between that reading and one in which JFK is a stripper.

Basically: by all means use whichever convention you like, but don’t act like it removes ambiguity from your writing. It merely shifts that ambiguity to different sentences.

(via emm-dash)