Let us begin this with a little grammar lesson, just in case. Note the difference between these two sentences:
“Liore went to the Lower City market for some plums, eggs and a hula girl doll.”
“Liore went to the Lower City market for some plums, eggs, and a hula girl doll.”
The latter sentence contains an example of a serial comma, which is used before ‘and’ or ‘or’ or ‘nor’ in a list. There are two schools of thought on the serial comma. Some people feel it is grammatically correct. Some people feel it is unnecessary and confusing. These last people are dumb and wrong and full of rocks. (To use a quotation from Eats, Shoots & Leaves, “There are people who embrace the serial comma, and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this, never get between these people when drink has been taken.”)
I spent the last three work days editing a 200+ page document on how to become a professional sales person (be perky! badger your friends!). I have seen many grammar atrocities. Semicolons scattered randomly around paragraphs like flower seeds, I assume with the hope that intelligent phrasing will sprout up in Spring. Capitalization schizophrenia. The fundamental eternal battle between “its” and “it’s”. Poor sentence victims with their subjects and objects hopelessly cut to pieces and then fragments sucked into black holes. I have seen them all, I have stared them down, and I have marked them with my very sharp pencil. But nothing, my friend, nothing yanks my chain like a lack of serial commas.
Why? Why must otherwise intelligent people persist in their flagrantly missing commas? I don’t understand, and I am highly suspicious of people who disagree. Although I should admit that I also don’t trust people who don’t drink coffee in the morning. I’ll make an exception for people who instead drink caffeinated soda and who are related to me (hi, Dad), but otherwise it’s fairly inexcusable. Why don’t you need coffee? Are you weird? Are you.. sensitive? The whole damned western world runs on getting a cup of coffee every morning — stop being a unique snowflake and just DRINK THE DAMN CO– um. Sorry. Anyway. Where was I?
Oh right. Serial commas. Frankly I know I’m a little neurotically detail-oriented, but use the damn things now so I don’t have to go back and compulsively edit them in later. Thank you, and good day.
Your English professor aunt is impressed with your grammar expertise–and your cleverness. (When I write “clever” in the margins of essays, sometimes even the students who are clever don’t know that I’m praising them . . . . The truly clever ones do.)
I definitely have the adequate amount of clever to know when to accept a nice compliment.
as someone who has little ‘clever’ and FAR too many grammatical errors in my past (so much so, I used to confuse my “grammar” and my “grandma” – to hilarious results!) I consider myself both told-off, and thoroughly confused: I don’t drink coffee in the morning either – does my cup of tea count? And should that have a serial comma in it too? or is it ok to have it just with milk?
or don’t I count as one of those “related” folks?
Anthony–your Aunt Martha here. I think Jessica out-clevers us all (and she’s good at accepting a compliment!), though I am clever enough to tell you not to swallow that comma in your tea. I’m a relative, and I have to confess to drinking only decaffeinated soda in the a.m. Obviously most untrustworthy . . . .
I just have to add that yesterday I was arranging for a reception at my university, and the head of Catering Services was typing up the ingredients for her Signature Salad. She wanted my reassurance that she was using the serial comma correctly, noting that her co-workers complained that she used too many commas. It did occur to me that cooking is a discipline in which serial commas might be essential, though I can’t offhand think of an example.
[...] I have written about commas before, and my campaign to bring serial commas to the world continues apace. However, lately I have come [...]