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How do the people against the Oxford comma punctuate this sentence: "We visited Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Turks and Caicos". Semicolons?
by thenoblesunfish 4y ago
How do the people against the Oxford comma punctuate this sentence: "We visited Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Turks and Caicos". Semicolons?
- cwillu 4y agoThe same way we punctuate “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”. More seriously, if following a grammatical rule causes confusion you can choose to ignore the rule (or, as would be the sane choice in the Buffalo situation, evade the rule by rewriting to avoid the issue).
- NonNefarious 4y agoExcept the Oxford comma PREVENTS confusion, and thus should be the rule.
- kahnclusions 4y agoNo, this does not logically follow. General rule: don’t use the comma. If the sentence is ambiguous to the reader in a specific case, then either: add a comma, or rewrite your sentence to be less confusing.
- NonNefarious 4y agoThe comma also dictates cadence. The comma implies a pause, which is also the correct delivery. The lack of a pause is not.
- cwillu 4y agoI definitely use both deliveries in speech depending on the context, usually adding in the final pause when it helps disambiguate. For example, “Apples, oranges and pears” the “and” has the about the same count as the pause after “Apples”; pausing before the “and” feels like a stutter.
- iso1631 4y agoYou, could, use, the, Shatner, comma, instead
- NonNefarious 4y agoThen you are also arguing in favor of the Oxford comma. "We're having hot dogs, hamburgers, and peanut butter and jelly.
- addicted 4y agoOr, always use the comma. So there is no possibility of confusion. Especially in a medical setting where the aesthetics of a sentence are not close to as important as clarity.
- xavor 4y agoYou mean "No, this does not follow logically"
- orev 4y agoI think most programmers can agree that the fewer special cases there are, confusion and overhead is also reduced. Always using the comma reduces a whole area of decision making where one needs to decide if it’s needed or not in every special case.
- sph 4y agoThey rely on the fact that "Antigua and Barbuda" is the name of a single territory, as is "Turks and Caicos". Humans are quite decent at parsing ambiguous text, you'll find.
- Closi 4y agoAgreed, and besides the broader point, considering this is a writing style guide, is to avoid ambiguous/awkward statements altogether. If this sentence was describing places you shouldn’t visit as an example, a bullet point list would probably be more appropriate. So in a more context-appropriate example this would probably be rephrased as This disease is found in the following areas: * Jamaica * Antigua and Barbuda * Turks and Caicos Now I’m not arguing if this particular style guide is a good idea or not - but I can see why you might want to avoid the original statement which was quite hard to parse with confidence.
- jeroenhd 4y agoHaving never heard of "Turks and Caicos" the sentence was quite difficult to parse in my opinion. I happen to have heard "Antigua and Barbuda" as a single place name at some point but even then I wasn't entirely sure until I saw your explainer. All confusion could be removed by a few commas, I don't see why you wouldn't add those.
- tester89 4y agoThe sentence already has the Oxford comma, and it appears it didn’t prevent your confusion. If the commas are not effective at their job, I don’t see why one would add them.
- addicted 4y agoBecause there is no guarantee that an Oxford comma would be used. If we were guaranteed that Oxford commas would always be used then there would be no confusion.
- shaky-carrousel 4y ago
- kahnclusions 4y agoPeople aren’t robots. Not enforcing the Oxford comma doesn’t mean you mindlessly write ambiguous sentences. Style guides that don’t use the Oxford comma will suggest either: adding the comma where necessary to avoid confusion, or rewriting your sentence to be less ambiguous.
- CogitoCogito 4y agoThat is sensible, but I still don't understand why people take a stand against the comma. Is saving a single tiny character that important even if it is not ambiguous to leave it off? Why would people recommend against its use?
- M3L0NM4N 4y agoInconsistency creates confusion as well. If there isn't an example of the Oxford comma increasing ambiguity, I see no reason it shouldn't be used every time.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoI agree that people aren't robots, but I disagree with the conclusion. People write ambiguous sentences very often, and I certainly appreciate a very simple rule that avoids needing people to pay mindful attention to list ambiguity. What is the benefit to not having the oxford comma? Is there a tradeoff I'm missing here, or are people advocating to avoid it simply on the basis of "I don't like it"?
- shaky-carrousel 4y agoNo, they write "We visited Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda and Turks and Caicos". Like people do in Spanish, where the Oxford comma doesn't exist.
- warinukraine 4y agoNo one is "against the Oxford comma". Some people are against the Oxford comma being mandatory, like me. I would punctuate your phrase exactly as you did. And at the same time I wouldn't use it in situations where there's no benefit. You, just like all other grammatical devices
- roenxi 4y agoI would recommend a list: We visited: - Jamaica - Antigua and Barbuda - Turks and Caicos I can't read that sentence no matter where you put the commas, I thought there were 4 entries until I spelled it out to make this comment and wondered why my list was short.
- WesolyKubeczek 4y agoI can’t say I’m very fond of making what ought to be a normal sentence into a fucking PowerPoint presentation.