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I was traumatized at an early age due to this very topic. I have long suppressed the memory till this podcast. This trauma has remained unaddressed for, lo, these forty (very) odd years.
My fourth-grade language-arts teacher insisted on the comma before the “and.†On the first day of fifth grade, my new language-arts teacher gave us a placement test on punctuation prior to teaching us any topics. Every sentence on the test had a serial list. I was scored with a zero for the test specifically due to the serial comma in every sentence. As it turns out, my fifth-grade teacher was totally committed to the omission of that particular comma. There was no appealing the grade.
I suppose in reaction to that teacher's cruelty, I have always held to the serial comma with desperate abandon.
I have never before addressed this great suppresed trauma, and now I feel as if perhaps I am not a totally worthless person after all.
Thank you, oh, thank you, callers, Martha, and Grant.
Gee, what a lousy teacher! I hope things at least got better after that first day. My 5th grade teacher yelled and threw chairs to the floor. His name was Mr. Sheriff, and nobody messed with the sheriff. The only thing that saved the 5th grade for me was my sudden awareness of the astonishing beauty of girls. But I was later traumatized when I realized that they weren't aware of me.
We had “The Rock†in high school. He was ex military, with regulation flat top, 0.2% body fat, the stature of a small bull on hind legs, and 100% combat ready. When he posed a question to the class, he would twist the chalk in his fingers as he waited for an answer, and his forearms would swell and shrink by inches with each flex. It took me nearly the whole year to figure out he was one of the kindest, most compassionate teachers around. I was ahead of my classmates in that realization.
There are plenty of great ones around.
I worked as a writer on a trade publication in the 1980s. The stylebook for the publishing house expressly forbid serial commas as well as parentheses around area codes (a front slash was all that was needed to separate the area code from the rest of the phone number.)
All because the tiny little comma (or two parentheses) uses ink. Multiplied by dozens of usages in one publication, by thousands of copies printed, by dozens of magazines produced by the publishing house, the amount equaled a lot of ink.
So who says punctuation can't save you money?
I don't feel strongly one way or the other on this issue, but I have to say that I didn't find the argument that serial commas reduce ambiguity convincing at all. The example in the podcast was a dedication "To my parents, the Pope and Mother Theresa." This is admittedly ambiguous...not to mention hilarious. However, if it had been "To my father, the Pope, and Mother Theresa" the second comma creates ambiguity that wouldn't be there without it. Plenty of other ambiguous texts have no commas at all, like my favorite suggestion for a letter of recommendation: "You'd be lucky to get this guy to work for you." Ambiguity is a risk we take when we use language. Don't count on commas to save you from it! 🙂
Ah, commas. Much to do about nothing, me thinks. One does best by usuing what suits one, especially with regard to these "in-transition" subjects. What's idiom today is formal tomorrow. If writing formally, follow style manual directions, if not choose your poison. As for me, I'll go without, thank you. To many commas is like to many anything; makes the place look junkie. This view is likely the result of too many years in journalism where brevity is a state of mind.
Sorry for the delayed reply, I've just discovered these great podcasts! I listened to this one today and became a little confused, as I was taught rather strictly to never use a comma before 'and' or 'but' by a British teacher who accused me of 'bombarding [her] with commas'. I still use it in some cases if I find it lends to clarity but if I were to describe the British flag I would say 'the colours of the Union Jack are red, white and blue' and never would it cross my mind to put another comma after 'white'! In the hilarious book dedication example, I can see how the extra comma would avoid ambiguity but in all honesty I wouldn't even have noticed the potential double meaning of 'To my parents, the Pope and Mother Theresa' unless it was pointed out to me. Perhaps to speakers of British English, who are used to using commas stingily, the confusion is far less likely to arise in the first place?
In fact, in some cases seeing a comma before the 'and' might confuse me even more. If it were 'to my family, the Carmelite Sisters, and the Pope' I would read the commas as if they were a subsitute for parentheses (my family who are the Carmelite Sisters). Maybe I'm just loopy 
Welcome.
Maybe I'm just loopy
You are not loopy. Faux Frenchie above points out the same thing:
“To my father, the Pope, and Mother Theresa†the second comma creates ambiguity that wouldn't be there without it.
‘to my family, the Carmelite Sisters, and the Pope'
In these lists of three, the middle element could represent a parenthetical, or apposition.
Still, I adhere to the serial comma. When I give a list of three, I pause there. Even when the pause is slight, the tone of the phrase — rising pitch through each element, and then starting again at low pitch on the new element — indicates a significant syntactic break. Of course, in the spoken case, aposition has an entirely different tonal pattern, and there would be no confusion — the tone remains lowered and usually soft volume throughout the appositive.
So, while the reason for the comma can be ambiguous, its function to signal some syntactic break is unambiguous. Exactly what the significance is of that break — that comma — may be subject to considerably varied interpretation.
I attended a writing workshop once where the presenter was a strong supporter of the serial comma. She gave a (supposedly true) example from someone's will. It read something like: John Q. gives 50 million dollars to David, Sarah and Beth. Based on the lack of the serial comma, David was awarded 25 million, and Sarah and Beth split the other 25 million. True or myth?
Regardless of the truth of your tale, I, for one, will never base a general grammar or style argument on legal language or precedent. I will not found, base, uphold, bolster, build, construct, fashion, fabricate, express, utter, write, speak, record, dictate, or otherwise suppprt any such relationship, correspondence, correlation, fraternity, semblance, basis, syllogism, or argument.
Here is one case in which the omission of the serial comma has caused a great deal of distress for many people.
In the regulations for Medicaid and Medicare services, there is a section describing the provision of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language pathology services. It mandates a cap on spending for these services. Originally, it was intended that there be a cap for each service - PT, OT, and Speech-Language. However, in the text of the regulation, a serial comma was omitted. The result was that a spending cap was applied to physical therapy, and a second cap was applied to occupational and speech-language therapy combined.
The result is that when a person needs both OT and Speech-Language services, say after suffering a stroke, they must often choose whether to spend the available insurance benefits on learning to dress themselves, or learning to talk or swallow (speech and language services include therapy for swallowing). Or to get a little therapy for each, which may not be enough to rehabilitate the person to independent function.
In my practice as a speech and language pathologist, when I have a new client that has Medicaid/Medicare, I have to explain that if their child or family member is already getting Occupational Therapy services, they must reduce these, or forgo the speech therapy. This is a terrible decision for families to make.
Lobbyists for professional organizations for OT and SLP have been working on this serial comma fiasco for years, with no change in the law yet (that I know of).
I agree with Martha about serial commas. If you always include them, there can be no misunderstanding. If you omit them, there is a risk of misunderstanding in some cases. And not all those cases are without harm.
>>>I agree with Martha about serial commas. If you always include them, there can be no misunderstanding. If you omit them, there is a risk of misunderstanding in some cases. And not all those cases are without harm.>>>
DebbieSLP, obviously great minds think alike! 🙂
Seriously, that's fascinating. Has that example been written about or discussed elsewhere online? That seems like a powerful argument for our side!
I've changed camps. A traitor to my teachers I may be. I always felt that the serial comma was a waste of space. If the sentence could be confusing, I would simply add it in as needed.
I have experimented for a few weeks and the result has been extra clarity at no significant cost.
I hope no one will be shocked.
By the way, we are calling this the serial comma. Shouldn't our topic be the terminal serial comma? There's no disagreement about most of the commas in a list, just the last one.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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