A 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.”

#SerialCommas #OxfordCommas #OxfordComma

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.

#SerialCommas #OxfordCommas #Typology 4/4

...
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.

#SerialCommas #OxfordCommas #Typology 3/4

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...

#SerialCommas #OxfordCommas #Typology 2/4