To be a fan of the Oxford comma?

[MrMan]

Sentences just seem so wrong otherwise.

YANBU, I love the Oxford comma now that I know what it is. [Heads off excitedly to listen to the song.]

errr- what's this about no apostrophes in GCSE English?
do tell.

I want to kiss the Oxford comma over its big, fat Oxford comma face

passes out

Great thread.

I don't like the Oxford comma, probably because I've been taught since birth never to use it.

I've had endless arguments debates with my DH about it, though, because, he; loves: to - put, a; punctuation; mark: wherever - he, possibly; can...

I used to rail against the Oxford comma but I like it now. It certainly has its uses!

I can't bear it when idiots people alter my grammar! I was sub-editor on a journal for a while that was published by a private company who used the Microsoft Spellcheck and grammar checker; I'd send off my copy and they would "set" it and send it back for approval, FULL of spurious commas! In the end I had to email the girl and ask her to STOP using bloody grammar check as it had no clue; it just liked to add commas into sentences that were, IIO, "too long", regardless of how much it messed with the sense of the sentence.
(It was a scientific journal, btw).

I don't like spellcheck much either. It can't spell liaise correctly. Even if this is a verb made up from a noun in French that has no corresponding French verb, it should still be spelt correctly.

Love this thread more than I thought possible .

Goblin - sadly a mild dyslexia has rendered my spelling eternally bad. My English books were littered with red marks at school. Spellcheckers are my saviour - MN should have one.

FFS this has got to be the ultimate show-off thread.If you gave a toss about it you would have posted it in pedants' corner for the other sad weirdos! But no. 'Look at me being all academic', on AIBU
What is unreasonable is that someone has such a sad life they are posting about punctuation at ten o'clock on a Friday night.

I love using a comma like this. Now I have some ammo against my colleagues that are always correcting it.....

buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo buffalo.

buffalo buffalo, Buffalo buffalo, buffalo, buffalo ?

buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo.

buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo!

All complete nonsense without punctuation! :)

I'm an Oxford comma user, and proud of it!

Beta I do agree with you actually... I have sweated before about being picked up on my spelling on here!!

I love a good comma, used correctly.

I use it when it's needed but don't punish anyone for not using it if there is no danger of ambiguity. English is an evolving, living, and vibrant language after all.

Mostly, you don't need the Oxford comma. Using it in every list is a bit OCD. Just use it when you really have to, like putting on rubber gloves to clean the loo, but taking them off to watch telly.

Mostly you don't need the Oxford comma, but if you always use it then when a list ends without a comma people will know that you are doing it on purpose and therefore there is no ambiguity.

I don't care if I needed a comma there. I am writing as I could speak and in that sentence I would have paused at the place where I used the comma.

This blog post from AngrySubEditor seems to get it about right, IMO.

I like an Oxford comma too, so YANBU.

'People will know that you are doing it on purpose'.

By that argument you should always ignore subtle differences in meaning for the sake of apparent consistency, which isn't actually consistency but a fear of what other people might think. That creates ambiguity as well as being very rigid. I've heard the same argument used to justify always hyphenating certain pairs of words, when sometimes they need it and sometimes they don't - it depends on the context.

Sometimes a sentence just flows better without a comma, and sometimes you need one for clarity. If you put a blanket rule on it you can really spoil a piece of good writing.

Nope. YANBU. DH and I met as English students and he went on to become an English teacher. I am for the Oxford comma and he is against. Result is much wrangling in our house, trading personal insults, and stropping off every time we need to write the list for Tesco. We've only made the marriage work through sheer bloody-mindedness. He will see sense eventually.

I am very attached to commas in their place whether that be Oxford or Pity Me.

We are fighting over this RIGHT NOW.

DH is now pacing round conservatory ranting that Oxford comma is clumpy and does nothing to remove ambiguity. He is wrong.

It can provide clarity especially with lists in a sentence!