#i am simply using your question as a springboard to launch me onto a soapbox taller than me ty for ur service

[pumpkinpaix]

re: the oxford comma

@bodhimcbodeface​ replied to your post: oh I really want to hear what you have to say about how the oxford comma doesn’t always reduce ambiguity? I can’t think of a situation where it’s unhelpful, please enlighten me! 

why can’t i just do reply to a reply anymore i had to paste this in manually 😭

ANYWAYS: you’ve activated my trap card!! here you go.

classic example of oxford comma reducing ambiguity:

I invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin. [w/o oxford comma - ambiguous: are JFK and Stalin the strippers, or are the strippers a separate group?]

I invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin. [w/ oxford comma - unambiguous: the strippers are indeed separate.]

however, you can tweak this example very easily into a sentence in which the oxford comma creates ambiguity instead:

I invited the stripper, JFK, and Stalin. [w/ oxford comma - ambiguous: is the stripper named JFK, or are JFK and the stripper different people?]

I invited the stripper, JFK and Stalin. [w/o oxford comma - unambiguous: we can see now that this is a list of separate people because stripper is singular, and thus cannot be conflated with JFK and Stalin.]

my point is not that the oxford comma is good or the oxford comma is bad--my point is that prescriptivism is nonsense and that language should, first and foremost, communicate. grammar should serve that, not the other way around. And it’s not just about reducing ambiguity, it’s also about tone, mood, style etc. all those articles that are like “why you should always use the oxford comma” and “is the oxford comma necessary?” and “the polarizing debate over the oxford comma” are always missing the point. it’s not about the fucking comma!!!! the oxford comma is not a beacon of grammatical clarity any more than like, any other punctuation mark. they serve purposes, they are not purposes in and of themselves. I use a period at the end of questions in written dialogue sometimes because I think a period conveys my intended tone better, not because of some bizarre notion that the period is a superior punctuation mark to the question mark. it’s such a ridiculous argument. (that might be a false equivalency, i’m tired and i can’t dissect my own logical fallacies after midnight pls try again in one business day)

i have nothing against the oxford comma, and I think it’s very useful in many contexts. I am, however, quite peeved at the way we talk about it in mainstream debates because I think it obscures the real issue, which is the encoded prescriptivist attitudes in our studies of grammar and language and the consequences thereof. see: “lawyer dog” vs “lawyer, dawg” vs what counts as a clear and unequivocal request for a lawyer in a court of law. these are separate issues, and law is, of course, very concerned with precision of language.

anyways, prescriptivism is bankrupt, stop dragging the oxford comma into your pedantry olympics, and just like. allow context to matter. that’s my piece.