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Comment by kkoncevicius | Hacker News Reader

You might be right, thou I don't see that sentence as being exceptionally unclear. The first remark in the OP - stating that this is about fruit flies, made me think they might not have heard about circadian rhythms and were genuinely surprised, as it portrays a certain view often shared by people who have studied little about biology.

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The conjunction should be "or" not "and"; and the lack of Oxford comma really, really hurts comprehensibility. Also, including the `in the afternoon` breaks the parallel structure of each of the items in the list.

A couple options to improve:

1. circadian rhythms are the 24-hour changes in our physiology that synchronize with the day-night cycle and modulate when we are hungry, sleepy, want sex, or, in the afternoon, have asthma attacks or a fever.

2. circadian rhythms are the 24-hour changes in our physiology that synchronize with the day-night cycle and modulate when we are hungry, sleepy, want sex, or suffer conditions like asthma attacks or fevers.

3. circadian rhythms are the 24-hour changes in our physiology that synchronize with the day-night cycle and modulate when we are hungry (mealtimes), sleepy (nighttime), want sex (??? i didnt know this was a thing), or suffer asthma attacks or fevers (afternoons).

>The conjunction should be "or" not "and"; and the lack of Oxford comma really, really hurts comprehensibility

Only for people unable to understand a sentence in context.

In general, the Oxford comma, or it's lack thereof, rarely, if ever, is a problem - except for grammar geeks (and even those have debated its significance since forever).

There is, of course, this counter example from 2018 where many people misinterpreted the headline at first reading:

https://desk.thecontentcloud.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/...

LOL, did they?

There's also this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.htm...

I found it difficult to understand.

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