WCYDWT: Serial Commas
October 25th, 2010 by Dan Meyer
The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.
[via Jeff Weintraub]
2011 Sep 18: "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin."
No wonder he has so many sad songs in his repertoire!! Either one of those men would have offered a life of misery, but BOTH of them?? Sheesh…….
That is a great, great catch. Of course, if this lack of a serial comma were intentional, then I would say that I have even higher regard for Duvall as an actress than I had for him as an actor.
I think what’s at play here is the ill-informed “no comma before the word ‘and’ ”
As teachers we should be careful about the large number of factually incorrect statements we make and force upon our students.
That’s why I give a f*** about the Oxford comma.
thank you.
and you should add an ela tag. get it up to 8.
@Lloyd, reference caught.
@Luke, done. Good call.
i’d like to thank my parents, ayn rand and god.
–or so i’ve heard said. but maybe somebody
just made that up. this one’s a keeper. ta.
LOL, cannot stop laughing at the comments. Love your blog Dan. Congrats on T & L feature.
Ha…I’m rolling, too! I LOVE this!
My recent headache: wonder vs. wander. I think God is playing a joke on me, because I have literally seen people write “I’m wandering who will be next…” (etc.) about seven different times in the past week. AGH!
This reminds me of the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. The book is an amazing hybrid between humor and grammar.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592402038/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?ie=UTF8&cloe_id=e905b4d9-ec1e-400d-bf3a-e290addf5cf0&pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1592400876&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=00WSGQNCV7H0RJXSDA4N
So I think I need to raise a stink here. First off, I’m glad to see people seeing a NEED for proper punctuation, and I agree with Lloyd about the Oxford comma having its purpose in these situations (unless he’s going for a reference that’s beyond me, which is often the case). But there really should be no ambiguity here. If that were a colon, we’d have quite a mess on our hands. But as is, if we’re educated enough in our language, that should be clear as day. Then again, let’s just use the Oxford comma all the time and not have to worry about this.
The TEAL guys would be interested in this. Where’s the typo?
http://yfrog.com/mumgij
[...] the serial comma artifact that was posted on Dan’s site a while back. I ended up at Wikipedia pondering a way to make [...]