this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
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"We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.": a guest list with three items.
"We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.": JFK and Stalin are the strippers.
Great example 😆
I like commas. It conveys the need for a pause in the mental narration taking place as I read and write.
Yeah, which is exactly why you don't need one to finish lists. It makes it sound like you forgot the last thing. "Peaches, pears... eh... and apples".
In the case of the Oxford comma it's more to distinguish between items in a list that are combined by the "and" or items in a list that are separate items. It's not used to indicate a pause in this scenario.
Thank you for defending the Oxford comma. Please take this fake gold award:
Ah, the classic pedantry.
Which is to point out that there is ambiguity in language as if this was relevant when saying the same sentence is just as ambiguous and nobody expects you to hiccup in order to signal the perfectly obvious thing that you're saying.
If you're going to mess up the structure of the list with an extraneous comma at least don't be a coward and remove the "and". How the English language allows this but frowns upon perfectly normal double negatives is beyond me.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/15/health/oxford-comma-maine-court-case-trnd/index.html
Amazing example
I posted this above as well, but it's very relevant to your comment.