Transcription:
With the Oxford comma:
we invited the strippers, jfk, and stalin.
[A picture showing a cartoon image of 4 people. JFK, Stalin, and 2 strippers.]
Without the Oxford comma:
we invited the strippers, jfk and stalin.
[A picture showing a cartoon image of 2 people. JFK and Stalin, both dressed in the same stripper outfits as the strippers in the above image.]
Humorous disinformation like this is why there are so many morons when it comes to grammar.
We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers is the correct way to say it; no confusion, with the proper names first.
The “and” is a substitute for the comma. Keeping them both is redundant.
This is not disinformation. At worst it’s elevating one specific academic opinion over another academic opinion. But the Oxford comma is recommended by many fine institutions, including Oxford University Press, APA, and Chicago Manual of Style (on the other hand, Cambridge and The New York Times prefer to avoid it). To suggest this is disinformation is itself the only disinformation here.
There are, apparently, cases in which it can cause confusion. However, in my experience, this is far less common than cases where it can prevent confusion. Rearranging sentences is, at best, a patch that can work in some situations but not others.
Getting rid of it is inconsistent. Complex lists with comma-separated clauses separated by semicolons always use a semicolon after the penultimate entry, even by people who would not recommend the Oxford comma. It also makes for greater consistency within its own sentence: you see a comma, you know there’s a new entry in the list—much simpler visual parsing.
Getting rid of it breaks the connection between the written and spoken word. “A, B, or C” has a pause after A and after B. “A, B or C” implies there is no pause after B. But there is, if the latter is intended to mean the same as the former.
A or B, C or D, and E or F is much easier than “A or B, C or D and E or F”.
Last two entries in my search history:
- oxford comma
- lobotomy clinics in sweden
With, the, Oxford Comma we, weaponize, commas to, talk, like, William Shatner
there is no defense for or against the oxford comma. there is only a defense of clarity of language, and in any case where you are writing a sentence like “we invited the strippers, jfk[,] and stalin,” you have already failed.
“we invited jfk, stalin, and the strippers.” works without punctuation. it’s that easy. punctuation does not exist to allow you to say whatever words you want with clarity. punctuation exists, together with words, to give you the language to express what you want with clarity.
if you insist on stringing together “the strippers jfk and stalin,” ab initio you almost deserve to be misunderstood.
I think that if you exclude the “Oxford” comma in your example you end up inviting President JFK as well as the hit grunge band “Stalin and the Strippers”.
nope, not unless Strippers is capitalized. and if the band actually exists and is a hit.
Rearranging can work for some contexts, but not for all. The most straightforward example would be if you were transcribing something spoken by someone else. You could try to blame them for speaking “wrong”, but that’s beside the point. They said what they said, and you have to write it down.
Do you put the Oxford comma in or not?
For me, the most important factor in answering that question is the fact that in speech, it’s typical that there will be more of a pause between “stalin” and “and” in a list of 3 than there would be in a list of just 2. So there’s no comma in lists of just 2, but there is a comma, including the Oxford comma, in lists of 3 or more.
At its core, written language is a way of representing spoken language. There are many cases in which this in not a one-to-one—a choice of em dash, brackets, or commas for parenthetical might have very little (if any) difference in how it is pronounced in the spoken word, for example—but hopefully we can all agree that there is at least a rough correlation there. And when “A B and C” has a similar pause between “B” and “and” as it has between “A” and “B”, it makes more sense to write “A, B, and C” than “A, B and C”.
not really relevant. there are style guides for transcriptions with altogether different considerations than for original writing.
when precision is important, it should never be “Oxford comma or not,” it should be “does this accurately reflect meaning or not.”
if you’re writing, that usually means rearranging words. if you’re transcribing, parentheticals or additional notes should be included if there is risk of misunderstanding. either way, if you are seeking precision, the overall meaning of a sentence should never come down to a single stroke of a pen.
additional pettiness that doesn’t matter
your statement “at its core, written language is a way of representing spoken language” is not true. to a degree, it is a valid understanding of how written language came to be, but does not aptly describe the relationship between written and spoken language at all.
from wikipedia:
[W]ritten language is not merely spoken or signed language written down, though it can approximate that. Instead, it is a separate system with its own norms, structures, and stylistic conventions, and it often evolves differently than its corresponding spoken or signed language.
thank you! every time I see this I get upset.
You could just as easily have a confusing sentence with the Oxford comma like this
“We invited JFK, the stripper, and Stalin.”
is JFK a stripper?
It doesn’t matter, it’s the author’s responsibility to write things unambiguously.
literally! glad to see other like minded souls. 💗
all this “it never causes confusion” “it always causes confusion”—boi, WHY ARE WE WRITING SUCH ABSURD SENTENCES IN THE FIRST PLACE.
if your sentence absolutely needs a comma, or absolutely needs to not have a comma to be even vaguely understood correctly, you are bad at writing. it’s not the style guide’s fault, it’s yours. write better damn sentences.
can you mark a NSFW post as NSFW please ty
I will die defending the Oxford comma
If all the things you could die for, you chose something redundant?
Pretty it’s not an Oxford comma when it’s needed
Never before have I had to be so careful in my wording when constructing a meme transcription…
Glad you didn’t use Apple’s select all & copy with this font:
With the Oxford
COMMe
we invited the strippers, jfk
诚附创
stalin.
Without the Oxford
Commo:
we invited the stripers, jfk and stalin.(Typically their OCR is great though.)
Damn, now both Stalin and the Chinese are getting involved‽‽‽ Damn commies.
stop trying to make the interrobang happen it’s not going to happen
Not with that attitude!
Stupid Sexy Stalin!
Who gives a fuck about an oxford comma?
We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin
The Oxford comma is the difference between helping my uncle Jack, off his horse and helping my uncle Jack off his horse.
'fraid not. That comma isn’t an Oxford comma. Also, the first example needs a comma both before and after Jack, because the commas are parenthetical commas.
Well shit, that does make sense.
Kutsuttu on stripparit, JFK ja Stalin.
Kutsuttu on stripparit: JFK ja Stalin.
No confusion here.
Okay but here’s the argument for why the Oxford comma can be misleading:
We invited the stripper, JFK, and Stalin.
I just changed stripper from plural to singular, and now you could read the sentence as: a stripper named JFK was invited, as well as Stalin
that kind of sentence structure always trips me up. we should start using parentheses for situations like this. or invent a new symbol, or something. we give commas too many jobs.
If the strippers name is jfk, you wouldn’t use a comma. The sentence would be “we invited the stripper JFK, and Stalin.”
would that comma need to be there at all though?
You would, actually. It’s called apposition and is commonly used in all varieties of English, as far as I’m aware
Do you have to be consistent about using the Oxford comma throughout your work, or can you use and omit it in various parts for clarity and to more closely resemble the emphasis in speech? This is assuming this is a formal environment and your school doesn’t have a preference for using or omitting it throughout.
Depends on the job, and exactly which English-speaking country you live in. A lot of employers have style guides, and those can mandate using/not using the Oxford comma so you’ll have to pick one and be consistent about it
I would like to evenly split $9,000 between strippers, JFK, and Stalin. -> Strippers get $3,000. JFK gets $3,000. Stalin gets $3,000.
I would like to evenly split $9,000 between strippers, JFK and Stalin. -> Strippers get $4,500. JFK and Stalin get $4,500.
First sentence, I agree, maybe. More likely, I’d say each of the 2 strippers get $2,250 JFK gets $2,250, Stalin gets $2,250. But either of those two interpretations works.
Second sentence I just completely disagree. Either you don’t use the Oxford comma, in which case this is the same as above, or the comma here is parenthetical, in which case JFK and Stalin each get $4,500. They are the strippers, so there’s no separate category for them.
To get the outcome you wanted in your second case (with the bare minimum sentence restructuring) I would say “I would like to evenly split $9,000 between the strippers and JFK & Stalin.” Ideally though, I’d use more words to be more clear.
