[projectaon] Re: serial comma
- From: "Lawrence Ritchie" <callmeinstead@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 09:11:39 +1200
2008/4/4 Simon Osborne <outspaced@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Jonathan Blake wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Lawrence Ritchie
> > <callmeinstead@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > I balk when I see your adoption of the serial comma. Talk about
> > > unconventional! (In the British publishing world -- and Lone Wolf is
> > > British
> > > -- virtually every publisher eschews its use).
> > >
> >
> > We've done much worse. :)
> >
>
> Heh heh!
>
> Speaking as someone who was born and lives in England, I remember being
> taught at school that you should never put a comma before 'and'--and even
> twenty years down the line I clearly remember sitting in the classroom
> thinking it was a stupid, inconsistent, nonsensical rule.
>
> If I list things on separate lines, I don't place the final two items on
> the same line "just because".
>
> If I separate a list using semi-colons, I don't "forget" to put one
> between the penultimate and final items.
>
> So why the missing comma before 'and'? It has never made any sense to me
> whatsoever. Just because it has historically been omitted does not mean we
> need to continue the archaic practise. Project Aon is, after all, an
> independent, international publishing house based on voluntary contribution.
> And as such, we have our own style manual--which includes the
> serial/Harvard/Oxford comma. We are not a behemoth publishing house with 100
> years of history. We don't need huge meetings to decide whether we're going
> to move forward and adopt a more modern grammatical rule. We were free to
> make such decisions very early on in our existence without the pressures of
> a back catalogue of many thousands of books, none of which utilised the
> serial comma. And as an 'international' organisation, we are not subject to
> local (grammatical) laws that we don't like. We haven't changed the spelling
> of British-English words to their ugly American counterparts (the word
> 'plow' makes me shudder), we are merely updating some of the punctuation to
> be more modern. After all, the way the previous publishers handled such
> matters is a moot point since they released the books riddled with errors
> and inconsistencies.
>
> Project Aon--21st Century Publishing, Baby.
>
I can't imagine many Brits would agree with you. LW is British and 'if it's
aint broke, don't fix it' comes to mind. The LW books published thus far
didn't use it.
As James Durrant pointed out with examples of why, the serial comma is
almost always superfluous (keeping in mind that there are occasions that an
extra comma should be used for clarity). Others have given other good
reasons, and a good one is why add it if it doesn't add anything to the
sentence. As for the claim of avoiding ambiguity, it can also cause
ambiguity. And (yes, I've used an 'and' at the beginning of a sentence, and
let's not debate that here) Durrant's point is of utmost importance -- the
final 'and' functions as a final comma anyway!
Nevertheless, if you're going to talk about being modern then you would NOT
adopt the serial comma! The modern tendency is for more and more pubishing
houses to stop using it (do the research for yourself). In light of this,
your "21st Century Publishing, Baby" comment is, therefore, a contradiction.
At the end of the day though, despite my apparent hot-headedness, I don't
really care :-) What's done is done! It's kind of fun debating the topic
though, and I and those that agree with me may have swayed the Darklords
among you to see the light in making the common-sense move to kill Oxford's
baby!
Cheers
Lawrence
Other related posts: