Serial Commas
I’m rather surprised that the serial comma has become an issue, but apparently a lot of people are rebelling against one of the few rules that actually exist in English.
I seem to remember Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat commenting on them earlier, and then I saw the Wolcott post, Serial Comma Killer, Qu’est-ce que C’est?, which seemed to indicate that there is a move afoot to change the rules, or ignore them.
I stand with the standard use of the serial comma, including the one before the conjunction. That’s the rule Miss Delores Smith stated, and that makes it good enough for me.
7 comments
As I mentioned somewhere in a comment on my site (probably on the post about British mysteries, because Colin Dexter’s character Inspector Morse was so insistent on the “Oxford comma”), my programmer’s soul longs for the serial comma, but I had avoided it because I thought it was a UK convention only. Following Wolcott’s links a few levels, I learned that various major publishers’ style guides in both America and Britain are all over the place on the issue.
I know not what course others may take, but henceforth you’ll find the serial comma on Steve Bates’s blog. (Ah, apostrophe-s-after-s: there’s another punctuation issue for another time…)
Um… I’m a not-serial-comma user, as a rule, unless the extra comma would prevent an ambiguity. On the other hand, the Professor hates commas and refuses to use them at all. Therefor, he writes the same way that he speaks — all in a breathless rush.
Hmm will we see blood in the streets or fatwas issued by the Arch-punctuator of Harvard? I agree with Anya: use it to prevent ambiguity but otherwise it is superfluous
I’d like to thank my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope.
Seriously, it doesn’t usually matter, but lists with consistent separators are easier to parse, by machine or by eye. I’d omit the “and” if they’d let me. 🙂
I was going to write something about settling the issue with a duel, but that might turn colons into semicolons and that would be rather messy.
Me, I prefer the use of the serial comma. As others have said, it better correlates with the natural spoken cadence. And, being an engineer, I find it’s use helps to dispell any possible Boolean connection between the last two items in the list, e.g., “grits, bacon and eggs.” I’ve often ordered the eggs without bacon (but the grits are mandatory).
I’m surprised at how many people agonize over this, in trying to not use incorrect English, instead of dealing with more important matters such as avoiding the split infinitive.
Brad