Sharing the best of humanity with the world, one story at a time.Harvard linguist explains perfectly logical reason Boomers insist on using ellipses in texts
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/why-boomers-insist-on-using-ellipses-in-texts-ex1
Orbital Policy GroupWe love all the newcomers to Bluesky! Feel free to join our pro-science, pro-cybersecurity, and Low Earth Orbit focused discussion.
#starterpack #LowEarthOrbit #science #cyber #oxfordcommas
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John ArnoldA nice example of serial commas _causing_ ambiguity in a novel: "I want to know if you killed Arna Solomon, Dove Knox, and the others."
Is Dove Knox the person addressed or one of the victims? If the writer didn't use serial commas, it would be unambiguous!
And here is an example of a simple series of two that causes the sort of humorous ambiguity Type 1 people are fond of quoting for series of three or more:
“Mr. Gerald Bell … was accompanied by his wife and mother—Mrs. John Bell.”
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19241029.2.126
No one would try to fix this with a comma, and it would be useless to try. It needs rewording, for example
“Mr. Gerald Bell … was accompanied by his wife and by his mother—Mrs. John Bell.”
Natasha Jay 🏳️⚧️ 
[calckey test] I think we need a serious Calckey discussion on antennas 🛸 since afaik the plural of 'antenna' is 'antennae', not 'antennas'.
Yes, I do like Oxford commas. How did you guess? 😉
#calckey #oxfordcomma #oxfordcommas #grammar
Yes, I do like Oxford commas. How did you guess? 😉
#calckey #oxfordcomma #oxfordcommas #grammar
AnneTheWriter@nf3xn
Good point. But if I may put forward some examples of missing #OxfordCommas:
"We went caroling with our dogs, Bob and Emma."
(The dogs are not named Bob and Emma.)
"They had dinner with two of Liz Taylor's ex-husbands, Robert Duvall and Robert Redford."
(In actuality, the group was four people, and Robert Duvall and Robert Redford are not among her many ex-husbands.)
Yes, these could also be sorted out by reorganizing the word order, but the mere additional of a comma makes that unnecessary.
In summary:
Type 1 people: Yeah, nah. SCs are not as obviously right as many of you seem to think.
Type 2 people: Right on!
Type 3 people: You are probably the happiest and sanest of the three.
...
d. An SC can be confused with a different type of comma, such as one introducing a clause with a new subject. That happened with a novel I was reading; I had to reread the sentence to make sense of it. (Alas, I didn’t write it down for future reference).
e. Unless unavoidable, SCs are not generally used in formal New Zealand writing – it seems to be similar in Australia and the UK.
I am very much a Type #2 person because:
a. SCs are ugly and mostly unnecessary. No one writes “cabbages, and carrots” so why should I write “beans, cabbages, and carrots”?
b. SCs don’t avoid ambiguity as universally as Type #1 people think – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma#Ambiguity
c. If there’s ambiguity, rewording is usually better than putting so much reliance on a tiny punctuation mark to fix things.
Continued...
At our university, we have writing styles that require* or discourage** using serial commas (SCs; aka Oxford commas).
I often joke with students that there are three kinds of people in the world:
#1 Those who love SCs.
#2 Those who dislike SCs.
#3 And the vast majority of people: those who don’t know what an SC is and don’t care.
* e.g., APA https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/punctuation/serial-comma
** e.g., NZLSG https://www.austlii.community/foswiki/NZLawSG/GeneralRulesMainText#Punctuation
Jennifer