North & South

Women, Commas and Clauses

SOME PEOPLE manage to generate an enormous amount of excitement and outrage over commas. Which is odd, because they’re seemingly such inoffensive punctuation marks. Take the Oxford (or serial) comma. I get asked my position on this with the same gravity as an inquiry about membership of the Masonic Lodge.

For those who are hazy about such things, the noted, “will delight grammar nerds and Oxford comma enthusiasts anywhere”, a group of truck drivers in Maine won a court appeal based on the ambiguity caused by a missing Oxford comma. And you thought punctuation was mere frippery.

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