Missing comma sparks outrage

i know that this is far from a new topic here.

nonetheless, i must say that i find the elimination of the oxford comma to be completely bewildering. ink is cheep. anything that can be done to improve readability should be practiced and lauded.

example: "the pub offered stout, porter, bitter, india pale ale, wheat beer, black and tan, and lager."

take out the oxford comma and a person may have to read the sentence more than once to get it right.

style should never be more important than readability. we write to communicate, not so that text will have a certain look.
 
Robert, as I have surely stated before, your assertion is right on. There are many, many examples, often significant ones, that read improperly without the Oxford comma.

. . . . Pete
 
I'd point out that AP and NYT style, which normally call for dropping the last comma in a sequence, require it in cases where confusion could result, as in the example given above.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Ink cheeps like a bird? I've never heard it. I assume the lack of caps was ironic intention.
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lack of caps is either a way to save ink or because the shift key on my olivetti is broken.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Ink cheeps like a bird? I've never heard it. I assume the lack of caps was ironic intention.
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lack of caps is either a way to save ink or because the shift key on my olivetti is broken.
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Or you're e.e. cummings.
 
originally posted by Joe Cz:
I'd point out that AP and NYT style, which normally call for dropping the last comma in a sequence, require it in cases where confusion could result, as in the example given above.
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That makes it even worse. It's bad enough to be wrong, but being inconsistent is unforgivable.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Joe Cz:
I'd point out that AP and NYT style, which normally call for dropping the last comma in a sequence, require it in cases where confusion could result, as in the example given above.
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That makes it even worse. It's bad enough to be wrong, but being inconsistent is unforgivable.
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

I "grew up" in publishing with the Oxford (serial) comma, but don't see any issue with not using one, unless one is required to avoid confusion. The goal should be concise, accurate communication, not a pointless (I'm all in on points!) debate about rules.

In any event, I'd suggest that inconsistent, comma, use is more consistent with Disorder than not.
 
originally posted by Joe Cz:
I'd point out that AP and NYT style, which normally call for dropping the last comma in a sequence, require it in cases where confusion could result, as in the example given above.
Click to expand...

ultimately, readability is in the eye of the reader (duh). what the author is intending to say may be perfectly clear to the author and yet, in the absence of an oxford comma, confuse the reader.
 
On Emerson, the sentence begins "a foolish consistency," which may mean either that form of consistency that is foolish or all consistencies, all of which are foolish. The rest of the quotation makes clear that the second one is the meaning:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." Whether Emerson should be one's guide in these matters is debatable, but he said what he said.

While there are any number of sentences that would be unclear without the oxford comma, there are a great many more that would not be to almost any reader. Whether this is reason enough to use one at all times is another issue.
 
The Professor supplies just a small slice of the surrounding context. The full passage is just about the merits of speaking your mind, even if you've changed your mind over time - who could disagree with that? Hardly a *mandate* to change your mind from one moment to the next, much less to do so within the space of a single writing, much less to do so when it comes to something so fundamental to the orderly operation of the spacetime continuum as the laws of comma usage.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
The Professor supplies just a small slice of the surrounding context. The full passage is just about the merits of speaking your mind, even if you've changed your mind over time - who could disagree with that? Hardly a *mandate* to change your mind from one moment to the next, much less to do so within the space of a single writing, much less to do so when it comes to something so fundamental to the orderly operation of the spacetime continuum as the laws of comma usage.
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So your argument is that since the larger passage, which is about not fearing to change one's mind, the sentence in question is about some particular kind of consistency, which would be foolish, even though the immmediate context, which is about consistency and which makes clear that it is consistency itself that is in question and not some form of it, makes that reading fairly impossible? The larger context does not disallow the second reading (one reason not to fear changing you mind is not to fear being inconsistent) and the immediate context makes clear that consistency itself is the issue. I won't get into the fact that Emerson writes in aphorisms, which are meant to be read as such, since that would be to bring in extra-textual information. Even so, we literary critical textualists evidently have different standards for construing sentences. We don't seek to make them ambiguous when they are not.

But maybe Joe should just start quoting Whitman:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
 
There's nothing ambiguous about the original aphorism read in isolation - you're the one who introduced the ambiguity by raising a piece of the surrounding context, prompting me to resolve the ambiguity by noting the rest of the surrounding context. Nonetheless, a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds, I shall amend my argument. My new argument is in agreement with yours that Emerson is meant to be read as pithy slogans and nothing he's ever written is deep enough to warrant even a fraction of this amount of parsing. Like J.D. Salinger or Ayn Rand, the profundity of Emerson takes a Coyote-style nosedive around the time one graduates from high school. Also, I can't believe the "foolish consistency" bit from the movie Next Stop Wonderland is unavailable on YouTube.

But perhaps Whitman indeed settles the matter. I present to you, Leaves of Grass Oxford commas:

"The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn. . . ."

"They were the glory of the race of rangers,
Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, courtship,
Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud, and affectionate. . . ."

"Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan,
These so, these irretrievable."

"Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg."

"If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run. . . ."
 
Other than the comma splices, common enough in poetry, I fail to see the inconsistency. Robert Ames should be happy that he uses the oxford comma. What may be confusing you is that rather than the 18th century mode, which, having separated one series with commas, separates two series from each other with semi-colons, he elects to leave a two item series unseparated, "green leave and dry leaves," so that he can separate that series from the next, "and of the shore and dark-colour'd sea-rocks," and separate that from the next, "and of hay in the barn." I will not, however, extend this to a defense of Whitman's grammar and punctuation generally. And yet he is the clearest of poets. Now Dickinson's punctuation is truly appalling if you read what she wrote rather than the earliest editions, which cleaned it up.
 
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