Strunk and White are laughing at us from beyond.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your child doesn’t have an opinion on the Oxford comma—or at least enough writing experience to know which system their teachers typically prefer—maybe they’re not quite ready for college?

My kid isn’t applying for admission to the school she already attends, and that school teaches good writing, not slavish arbitrary rules.

Okay, but look at the arbitrary rules you followed in your post alone: beginning your sentence with an uppercase letter; ending with a period; using a contraction with an apostrophe; joining two independent clauses with a comma and the coordinating conjunction “and.”

Was it slavish to follow those rules? We surely could have understood your meaning if you hadn’t, and great writers have chooses at various points to eschew these rules. What in your opinion makes a particular rule slavish?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who don’t use the Oxford comma are monsters.

+1. Also, my 6th grader knows how to use the serial comma: using it does not look like a parent edited, it looks like your kid can write.

Does your sixth grader know how to use a semicolon? Maybe she can teach you.

A semicolon connects two thoughts of equal weight, while a colon connects an introductory thought with additional detail or explanation. The use of a colon in the sentence above tells you that the writer sees the second half as additional detail. That is, because a 6th grader knows how to use the comma, using it does not look like a parent edited.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why you should always use the Oxford comma, ripped from today’s headlines lol:

U.N. court ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel's Netanyahu, former defense chief and a Hamas leader

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/icc-arrest-warrants-israel-benjamin-netanyahu-yoav-gallant-hamas-mohammed-deif/

!!!!!

In that example, the Oxford comma is necessary for clarity.

If I write “Please buy eggs, milk and strawberries” the Oxford comma is not necessary to understand me.

It isn't necessary in that example because there's not a plausible other meaning -- but if you'd put it in, the reader would not have had to take a microsecond to think about whether there was another possible meaning. Using it would have been an improvement.

This. There is just no reason not to use it there. People choose not to use the serial comma because they think it shows some kind of small-minded adherence to arbitrary rules? That is a very strange reason not to write clearly.

Doesn't its use just indicate that you have adopted a set of established rules? For instance, the Chicago Manual of Style, which many college professors will request for papers, requires the use of the serial/Oxfor comman. As a writer and reader, I am just thrown off when writers don't use it. There's almost always no good reason not to use it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who don’t use the Oxford comma are monsters.

+1. Also, my 6th grader knows how to use the serial comma: using it does not look like a parent edited, it looks like your kid can write.

Does your sixth grader know how to use a semicolon? Maybe she can teach you.

Anonymous wrote:If your child doesn’t have an opinion on the Oxford comma—or at least enough writing experience to know which system their teachers typically prefer—maybe they’re not quite ready for college?

My kid isn’t applying for admission to the school she already attends, and that school teaches good writing, not slavish arbitrary rules.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only autists and anti-intellectuals care about this one way or the other.

Use whichever is unambiguous.

Filling your writing with comma-separated lists is bad writing.

Use bullet points for technical writing, and use your words for essays.

And attorneys. It actually really matters in contracts. There have been a couple of legal cases in which the outcome hinged on a missing Oxford comma, including the recent Maine Oakhurst Dairy judgement to which a pp linked.

Lawyers can’t write to save their lives. That’s why judges are constantly reinterpreting laws and contracts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Omg - it’s not that deep.
It does not matter.

It does if it is only one sign of a lack of precision that also shows up elsewhere in someone's writing. I teach, and my best writers over the years have been Oxford comma users. When I see a student paper that doesn't use it, I'm on alert for other problems.

So you can’t see problems unless your one nitpick alerts you? Telling on yourself there.

Anonymous wrote:I couldn't care less.

I could.

Anonymous wrote:Omg - it’s not that deep.
It does not matter.

It does if it is only one sign of a lack of precision that also shows up elsewhere in someone's writing. I teach, and my best writers over the years have been Oxford comma users. When I see a student paper that doesn't use it, I'm on alert for other problems.

I couldn't care less.

Omg - it’s not that deep.
It does not matter.

An oxford comma is what separates the civilized from the heathens.

Absolutely Oxford comma. The lack of precision without it feels risky and the sensation of a breathless run-on is real.