Yay or nay? This is mostly aimed at native English speakers, although others are also free to yay or nay.
It's what I learned in school. I actually deal with this constantly at work. Seems as if I'm the only one who learned about the Oxford comma. So when it comes time to edit copy, I clash with my coworkers on this a lot. I say yay, and I'm the only one.
It's optional, although often used to clarify meaning. For example; note the ambiguity in the statement "I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God." Such illustrious forebears are not implied if one uses the Oxford comma, where it becomes "I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand, and God."
The first statement implies the subject's parents are Ayn Rand and God. I think this is quite clear if scanned for meaning.
The situation of the lack of clarity of that sentence is caused by the order. You're listing a biary unit followed by two other nouns under a verb. The comma only vaguely clarifies this. If you put your nouns in a logical order it becomes clear that the oxford comma is just syntactic sugar. Reordered, this sentence has no ambiguity. "I would like to thank Ayn Rand, God and my parents."
yah or nay what? i throw in a bunch of commas here and there so people can catch their mental breath and have some idea what i'm talking about. i totally have no idea what the op is/was talking about though.
Yay. I have run into a number of situations, especially in U.S. Government requests for proposals, when the absence of the Oxford comma led to serious misunderstanding of requirements. After calling for clarification, our company routinely inserted to commas in order to make sure that our writers understood what was being requested.
Yay. It's good practice. There are plenty of instances in which it is needed for the intended meaning of a sentence. If you don't keep habit of using it, you might omit it when it is definitely needed. "Dear boss, I've decided to write a book about you, an acquaintance and a complete asshole." OR "Dear boss, I've decided to write a book about you, an acquaintance, and a complete asshole. "
i always thought commas came from pressing the little key to the left of the period, or drawing that little curved line if you're writing with a pen or pencil. i'm curious how you can tell if one of them has been to oxford? (i guess the above examples answer my question. i had to stare at the two sentences for a full five minuets, to discover the difference between them though.) (i'd honestly never heard the term "oxford" comma before)
