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> In a sane world where everyone used the Oxford comma ... Serial commas can also create ambiguity when they resemble appositives[1]. There’s no single rule th
by egwynn 10y ago
> In a sane world where everyone used the Oxford comma ...
Serial commas can also create ambiguity when they resemble appositives[1]. There’s no single rule that always only ever eliminates ambiguity for these things besides treating English like math and flooding it with parentheses.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma#Creating_ambiguity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma#Creating_ambiguit...
- xelxebar 10y agoHmmm... I vote for writing English in direct AST syntax to avoid these ambiguities.
- fao_ 10y agoI actually tend to use curly braces as 'ambiguity braces', when a term is ambiguous. They've met with some amount of success.
- insertnickname 10y agoWould you show an example?
- fao_ 10y agoa, b, c, or d a, b, {c or d} a, b, c or {d} a, {b or c}, d
- egwynn 10y agoIf only I knew for sure which of the entries on the wikipedia disambiguation page for ‘AST’[1] you were talking about! /s [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AST
- mikeash 10y ago(agree (with (I you)))
- Symmetry 10y agoQuite true in general but I'd hope that legal documents would tend to avoid appositives since they tend to introduce confusion and legalese isn't known for prizing brevity.
- GavinMcG 10y agoIs there a situation where it resembles an appositive which isn't a matter of verifiable fact? In the example "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God" a court could go check and see if the speaker's mother is in fact Ayn Rand. Whereas in this court case, the ambiguity is an unresolvable one.