Waaayy OT - The Oxford Comma - Yea or Nay?

[TheEqualizer]

Also known as the serial comma.

Are you in favor of using it or not? Regardless of your position, please provide reasoning.

I guess your country of origin may dictate your response to some degree.

My vote: Yea. Why? There are times where it helps to avoid ambiguity. And so to remain consistent, I will always use it even if there is no danger of ambiguity.

[I guess they don't get more OT than this one, eh? So Gio, feel free to delete if you so wish, but please don't bitch about this post if you think it doesn't belong here -- just ignore it in that case as you were already warned that it was waaayy OT]

[ltwoman]

But on the iPhone that damned comma is getting harder and harder to use... I try, I really do, but...

[DirtyMartini]

Haha. Love the thread.

IMO, Oxford Comma -- Hell yea. You hit the nail on the head already, EQ, re: ambiguity. Assuming the rest of the sentence makes sense (no comma can translate verbal junk): Without Oxford comma: infinite possibilities for ambiguity/confusion; with Oxford comma: none.

[Lynne]

Oxford comma, yea! For all of the reasons DM stated.

My freshman seminar students are turning in their first essays today, so I'm in Serious Editor Mode, ready to spill lots of green ink in the interest of clarity and persuasion. Will be on the lookout for the Oxford comma.

[moonstone]

To my utter shame I had forgotten what an Oxford comma was and had to google it.

Oh yes, we did that at school a long time ago........ a very very long time ago in my case.

I'm leaning towards yea on this one. If I can remember to use it.

[smax]

The Times once published an unintentionally humorous description of a Peter Ustinov documentary, noting that "highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector".[28] This would still be ambiguous if a serial comma were added, as Mandela could then be mistaken for a demigod, although he would be precluded from being a dildo collector."

from wikipedia.

[Susan]

Yea! For clarity and consistency. When dealing with multiple writers, it also relieves the editor of having to make text consistent from one document to another (e.g., if you are editing a magazine or some other series of documents that will be published at the same time) and writers don't have to remember what the editor thinks is a simple series vs. what is a complex series.

[luddite lady]

Big time yea from me. After all, it's the only punctuation mark to have a college named after it.
But the big question is whether or not the Oxford comma gets inducted into the RRHoF ahead of Rush.

[Shangeris]

Let me just point out that the use of the Oxford Comma might be different in the Italian grammar.
That said my answer is no and yes, because i was always told not to use it and for an.. aesthetic reason but it is necessary sometimes to avoids ambiguities.

[luddite lady]

Hey, Davide! Long time no see! I agree. Punctuation rules vary more than one would think from one language to the next. I seem to need far fewer commas when I'm writing in French. (And I imagine that would extend to Italian too if I actually remembered how to write anything more than simple greetings.) I think romance languages are generally less ambiguous and need less support from punctuation thanks to grammatical genders and the way they and singular and plural are signaled by different modifiers. (Ah, comparative stylistics ... such a beauteous thing!)

[Shangeris]

Well, in Italian punctuation is a crucial thing. It helps to make the meaning more understandable, as it does in other languages, but it is very important since there can be an infinite number of dependent causes (I googled that one) in one sentence.
It's quite a complex language and it seems that if you make more long and hardly understandable sentences, your Italian is better and academical. I often find such sentences in school books, which should be easily understood.