That was a line in the Sister Boniface episode that our local PBS channel showed just last Sunday!
This is the kind of inconsistency up with which I will not put. “And” is a type of coordinating conjunction that conjoins a pair of items, either words or clauses. It’s not a general-purpose list delimiter. That’s what a comma is used for – excuse me, it is that for which the comma is used. Even when there is no chance of ambiguity, the Oxford comma should be used for reasons of consistency.
It’s that first commonly understood usage of “and” that causes such difficulties when the Oxford comma is omitted in a list: the pair that it naturally conjoins is the last item and the second-last item. Whereas with the Oxford comma, the delineation of items is clear. The “and” is merely an indication of finality, an introduction to the last item in the list.
A guy I worked with years ago, used to ask, “Did you cross all your Ts and dot all your lower case Js?”
Clarity is important, unless you are a lawyer trying to obfuscate the truth or an accountant doing the same.
Ah, yes. There it is—the example I’ve never actually run into in practice.
My general feeling is to default to list, and use something besides commas if you need to set off an appositive-like statement. If I wanted to say that Jesus was my father, I might go with “I’d like thank my father (Jesus) and my mother” or even “I’d like to thank my Father—Jesus—and my mother.”
Yep. And that’s actually how I would transcribe it (most likely the latter way) if I wanted that meaning (that my father is Jesus).
Your wife and I would probably get along well. I match her on both of those. Crossing 7s seems to help reduce ambiguity with 1s (I also cross Zs, a habit I picked up in high school math classes to reduce ambiguity with 2s). As for the OC, it just makes sense and the list is consistent in formatting if it’s used.
It’s all those bloody prescriptivists who considered Latin the perfect language and tried to make English follow Latin rules, rot them.
I do not understand this reference. You’re supposed to dot the lowercase Js.
Does she dot her lower case Js?
Or engaged in a lawsuit with a cable company.
Telling people to rewrite an ambiguous sentence is fine at times.
But you can’t rewrite all of English. Grammarians have to deal with it in the raw.
I’ve always used the OC, even before I knew it had a name. Reasons:
- It’s rarely wrong to use it.
- Sometimes it’s needed for clarity.
- I don’t want to forget it when I do need it.
On the other hand, I don’t look down on those lesser intellects who eschew it. 
Greater intellects.
Because we understand without needing punctuation for children.
If you don’t like the Oxford comma, just replace it with a regular comma.
Would a GED comma suffice?
Yep, same here. But I do not always remember.
The folks in Cambridge would like to have a word with you.
In high school I was taught to not use the Oxford comma (it wasn’t called that, just was taught not including that last comma) but now I do since it seems to be the more accepted way these days.
I think the Oxford comma makes a sentence read better, and I think it adds clarity and consistency. But I wouldn’t get much fussed by it one way or another. Nor with using incomplete sentences once in a while. The biggest trainwreck of English is spelling, and that ain’t going to be fixed much, ever.
That’s where “[sic]” comes in.
This is probably my most snobbish opinion on anything, and I apologize in advance.
Redundant punctuation seems really . . . bourgeoisie . . . to me. Like, a person who learned to punctuate by rote and meticulously hyper-corrects just in case.
So I prefer the cleaner look of no Oxford comma, no periods at the end of sentences in bulleted lists (especially on slides), and no quote marks around like, mottos or in signatures.
But I recognize that this is my hang up.