The Oxford comma, both friend and foe

[Ravensquawk]

I find the biggest problem is that there are a good many people with opinions on commas based entirely on their own whims.

I am borrowing that.
It extends farther than commas.

e.g. I heard a loudmouth woman on a bus loudly (of course) holding forth that "The Doctor [as in Doctor Who] should be a man!!!!"
Her entire certainty-at-the-top-of-her-lungs booming "authority" was nothing more than what made a good object for her crush.

Let's watch how that plays in politics and pharmacy refusals....

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

I'm a fan of the Oxcom, as I think it helps more often than hurts.
I'm not really seeing the problem in the second example. Is it that "the Pope" could be misunderstood as an appositive for my father?
Rather than ditch it (which, as I read it, would then make the pope and the dame a unit) reordering the list might help.
"I would like to thank my father, Dame Judi Dench, and the Pope." Still, I think the context would be enough to make it clear.

Perhaps you are telling us something about Dame Judi Dench that she doesn't want revealed.

Another obvious option is: (Person #1 Title), (Person #2 Title and Name), Person #3 (appositive).
"I would like to thank the Pope, Dame Judi Dench, and my father."

Then again, if read a million years from now, someone might think the that my example claims that Dame Judi Dench was the Pope at the time of writing.

But these examples might be an example of where the individual items on the list could be chosen more carefully. Perhaps all titles and names.
"I would like to thank my father John Doe, His Holiness Pope Francis, and Dame Judi Dench."

 

[Cthulhu.Science]

@THX1138
Commas are simpler than you might think. I find the biggest problem is that there are a good many people with opinions on commas based entirely on their own whims. But much like spelling, there are standard conventions.
Commas are used in a number of ways, but for writers of fiction, there is only one major application: to separate ideas in order to make them clear.
Often a comma is used to separate phrases and clauses in a sentence. To fully grasp this use, one had to understand phrases and clauses, not commas.
a second common use is to separate items in a list. Some items might be just a single word while others might be two or more, so the comma lets you know where each ends. (Since we always put and before the last one, there's controversy over whether a comma is also necessary. But I guess in Oxford they always do this.)
The third major use is appositives. These always need to be separated with commas so know where the appositive starts and ends.

So whenever you are writing and aren't sure if you need a comma ask yourself if you have one of these three cases and then add your punctuation accordingly.
There are a few exceptions to these conventions but that's usually where the comma is optional, so it's not wrong if you use one.
Regional differences do exist, but you can leave that to a copy editor.

Do not, however, fall for the often repeated "tip" that you should use a comma wherever you pause for a breath. It has no grammatical basis whatsoever and, depending on your lung capacity, may be wrong more often than right.

Comma Warning! Beware of dangling modifiers.

 

[Oligonicella]

Commas can be used for lists and also for pauses in speech when writing rhetoric. "Guidelines" are guidelines, not commandments set in stone. People spend way too much time worrying about what some grammarian (who don't all agree) thinks than to what the sentences sounds like when read.
Grammar is oft times the enemy of writing.

 

[Swank]

Commas can be used for lists and also for pauses in speech when writing rhetoric. "Guidelines" are guidelines, not commandments set in stone. People spend way too much time worrying about what some grammarian (who don't all agree) thinks than to what the sentences sounds like when read.
Grammar is oft times the enemy of writing.

I rarely see commas used "incorrectly" that aren't also chopping up the sentence in a discordant way.

Scratch 'rarely' - never.

 

[Matteo]

I also use them.

And I think part of the reason some people say "why" is because the examples given are often absurd/funny. After all, no-one would would think my parents are the Pope and Mother Teresa and so there would be no confusion.

However, if I were to write a book and the dedication read I would like to thank my closest friends, Stephen King and Connie Willis then confusion could arise. After all, who says there are not my closest friends (they're not).

 

[JunkMonkey]

Writers (and the editors who let them get away with it) who don't use the vocative comma are my bugbear. There was one writer whose books I used to read to my kids for bed time story who didn't (or rarely) included them. the lack of them made reading the books aloud a real pain in the arse. I gave up after a while.

They were full of:

"Let's eat Grandpa." Vs. "Let's eat, Grandpa."

Sorts of things.

 

[Astro Pen]

I use it quite often, usually to emphasise what comes after the and.

As in Hobbes classic line:
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan.

 

[Swank]

"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Do you like this line, and would enjoy reading it in a modern book?

 

[Astro Pen]

Do you like this line, and would enjoy reading it in a modern book?

What I would not enjoy is all those semicolons riding between the carriages.
It is a bit of a run on, and they don't change that. Today, I think, it might be better as three sentences.

 

[JunkMonkey]

What I would not enjoy is all those semicolons riding between the carriages.
It is a bit of a run on, and they don't change that. Today, I think, it might be better as three sentences.

Is that a run on sentence? Reads like one perfectly formed single sentence to me.

 

[Astro Pen]

Technically maybe. But it is a sprawl of and, and, and, and. Four of them. I'd split it up you wouldn't. Each to their own.

 

[NovaKinklu]

I believe that a lot of our problems with punctuation, commas included, derive much from the fact that our spoken language has deteriorated significantly over the years. We tend to write the way we speak, so the punctuation becomes onerous to inject into the written sentence. Punctuation has some fairly rigid rules, but since we speak so poorly, we're trying to fit organic objects into an inflexible matrix.

Put me down as a fan of the Oxford comma. I use it much more often than I omit it.

 

[Swank]

I believe that a lot of our problems with punctuation, commas included, derive much from the fact that our spoken language has deteriorated significantly over the years. We tend to write the way we speak, so the punctuation becomes onerous to inject into the written sentence. Punctuation has some fairly rigid rules, but since we speak so poorly, we're trying to fit organic objects into an inflexible matrix.

Put me down as a fan of the Oxford comma. I use it much more often than I omit it.

I think if more new writers spoke aloud their prose, they wouldn't have commas in so many incorrect places.

 

[Oligonicella]

I rarely see commas used "incorrectly" that aren't also chopping up the sentence in a discordant way.

Scratch 'rarely' - never.

Captain Kirk is discordant. Writing his stutter using ellipses would indicate waaay more thought than his vocal delivery has in it.

‘The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.’ MT

 

[Ursa major]

We tend to write the way we speak, so the punctuation becomes onerous to inject into the written sentence. Punctuation has some fairly rigid rules, but since we speak so poorly, we're trying to fit organic objects into an inflexible matrix.

An additional issue is that we don't speak like a computer program would, so that we give all sorts (and different types) of clues** that allow the listener to understand what is meant. On the page (or screen), punctuation is the only tool we have available to do this.


** - The way one says "eats shoots and leaves" (punctuation deliberately omitted) lets a listener know whether shoots is a verb or a noun; a reader might be able to glean the intended meaning from the wider context there in the prose, but it isn't clear in just those four words without the use of punctuation.

 

[Ursa major]

I think if more new writers spoke aloud their prose, they wouldn't have commas in so many incorrect places.

A good piece of advice (though it may not work for everyone) is to read one's words aloud, as it's a good way of spotting errors (and not just in punctuation).

I suspect that is because the parts of the brain that we use to parse written text are not all the same parts that we use to listen to spoken text, though we tend to use the former when editing. In any case, it seems that all those errors that we end up overlooking, however hard, and however often, we scan the text containing them, can leap off the page when we speak them.

I can't be sure if we notice the errors in the processing required for speaking the words, or if it's because we hear the mistakes. (It may be a combination of both, or different ones for different types of error.) Either way, it works for at least some of us.

 

[Phyrebrat]

who don't use the vocative comma

Today I learnt what vocative means, thank you

 

[Ursa major]

Today I learnt what vocative means

O really...?

​

 

[Montero]

As in Hobbes classic line:
"No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan.

My head leapt to the cartoon with Hobbes in it.
and
Oh, is that where nasty, brutish and short comes from.