Because I am a punctuation freak sometimes, I found this interesting, and no one else will: What I have always called the serial comma is also called "the Oxford comma," or "Harvard comma."
I always remember a style memo from one of my first journalism jobs saying "we eschew the serial comma." Here's a song that says that a little more bluntly.
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5 comments:
Huh. I prefer it, because otherwise I tend to envision two groups of objects: the first one standing alone, and the second two together. In fact, it is three separate things.
Ha ha, read this article. Especially the last line.
http://www.siue.edu/IS/WRITING/NewsletterC/Issue%208/page3.html
I not only care about the serial comma, I was delighted to find it had other labels. Who knew?
Great video - now I'm waiting for a hit song about gerunds.
Ann F
Commas are important! See:
http://www.cafepress.com/siftin.182951599
I'm a copy editor, so I too, find this to be interesting.
I remove the serial comma from the copy I read because AP style says to do so. But there are times when I read a series of items, get to the "and," and think to myself, "I'd really like to put a comma there if it were allowed."
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