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See I didn't grow up thinking I was using commas to separate list items, I grew up thinking I was contracting a bunch "and"s. That is: A red one and a blue o
by Avshalom 11y ago
See I didn't grow up thinking I was using commas to separate list items, I grew up thinking I was contracting a bunch "and"s. That is:
A red one and a blue one and a green one and a purple one.
became
A red one, a blue one, a green one and a purple one.
Notably kids seem to do the first one naturally.
If commas were list separators and not just a short hand why would we end them with "and" at all.
- ashearer 11y agoPossible reason: to distinguish the list from an "or" list.
- Avshalom 11y agoIt was more of a rhetorical question from 6-8 year old me. Yeah, though, and certainly there's other reasons, like distinguishing it from a bunch of dependent clauses. That we elide "and"s when speaking a list is of course a point in favor of the comma being a separator not a replacement too. At the end of the day it's English; we just do what feels good.