Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanwilson | Hacker News Reader

In almost every case I see people arguing for an Oxford comma I see a sentence that should be broken up or restructured to make it less ambiguous. A sentence where not noticing a comma can drastically alter it's meaning (especially when it's a losing battle to make everyone understand the Oxford comma) is not a good sentence.

View on HN

Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list.

It seems clear to me that if you are listing multiple items in a sentence, a comma should separate every item in the list.

Alternatively, we could use the semi-colon for lists. This is what I do sometimes at work, especially when the items in the list may contain commas.

In this example, what does "for shipment" add to the meaning? I figure omitting that would make this far clearer.

Meh. DRY. The conjunction serves the exact same purpose as the comma, as well as signalling the end of the list. Any construction that is made ambiguously appositive by the absence of an Oxford comma has a parallel construction that is made ambiguous by the presence of an Oxford comma.

>Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list.

Why the arbitrary restriction on bulleted lists? Situations like this seem ideally suited for a simple list.

>Why the arbitrary restriction on bulleted lists? Situations like this seem ideally suited for a simple list.

Exactly. Laws are generally drafted as lists of clauses anyway.

Because prose doesn't use bulleted lists.

The law in question has a numbered list.

What do you use for lists of lists?

Really? On the contrary, I see sentences all the time that are desperately in need of an Oxford comma. Example: "The three target demographic groups for the new product are fruit and vegetable lovers, vegan and paleo dieters, and reduced-meat health and fitness individuals." This sort of thing pops up in work documents frequently.

Any time you have categories that themselves include more than one item, an Oxford comma is really helpful.

How about this? "The three target demographic groups for the new product are 1) fruit and vegetable lovers 2) vegan and paleo dieters and 3) reduced-meat health and fitness individuals." Alternatively define a shorter name for each group for reuse. Not everyone even understands the Oxford comma either.

You've now interjected numbers in an otherwise word-only sentence, which is generally a no-no. You might as well just go for a bulleted list at that point since you're breaking the grammatical flow. But there are plenty of other examples besides mine where the entire sentence meaning changes based on that comma. For example, "Amanda found herself in the Winnebago with her ex-boyfriend, an herbalist and a pet detective."

As another point, for me the Oxford comma makes reading generally easier because it's clear where a list ends. If I see ", and" then I know what follows is the last item without having to read ahead and figure out if there's more to come.

You touch on a good point, but this isn't about a good sentence. This is about a law. Laws aren't meant to be good sentences. They are meant to be clear and exacting regardless of style. They must also be consistant with other laws, most all of which were written long ago by very different hands. Exacting and consistant punctuation matters far more than recent development in the use of commas. If adding one makes a law more clear, you add it regardless of modern trends.

Agreed. Such semantic fragility indicates a design flaw, IMO.

> alter it is meaning

This is an instance of Muphry's law, which states that when berating others for editing or spelling mistakes, one is bound to commit a similar or worse offence. There are several other occurrences in this thread.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com