[Ads-l] Humorous Serial Comma Examples =?Windows-1252?Q?=97_?=Are They Genuine or Apocryphal?

[Stephen Goranson]

Is it certain that your "problem," Dave, universally obtains?
Stephen Goranson
retired pedagogue
retired construction worker
etc., etc.
________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2022 8:20 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Humorous Serial Comma Examples — Are They Genuine or Apocryphal?

Good work, G. The issue isn't ambiguity or ambivalence. It's the problem of
the reader bursting into uncontrollable laughter and calling out "Hey! Get
a load of this! Somebody needs to go back to ninth grade!"

JL

On Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 8:09 AM dave at wilton.net <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

>
> Humor, or lack thereof, aside, my problem with such "examples" is that
> there is absolutely no ambiguity in them. The presence or absence of the
> serial comma makes no difference; no one is going to mistake the intended
> meaning. The important thing is clarity, not the comma.
>
> Pedagogically, they give exactly the wrong lesson about language.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "ADSGarson O'Toole" <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2022 11:40pm
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: [ADS-L] Humorous Serial Comma Examples — Are They Genuine or
> Apocryphal?
>
>
>
> Here are three examples of sentences without Oxford commas:
>
> (1) Book dedication: Dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
>
> (2) The highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson
> Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.
>
> (3) Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson
> and Robert Duvall.
>
> The analysis is available on the medium website here. I concluded that
> one example was constructed by a humorist. The other two are genuine
> examples or comical ambiguity printed in newspapers.
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://quoteinvestigator.medium.com/52dc15d0f4a8__;!!OToaGQ!shRUcQWOF4j50Sm7psticHk1ZlrdkAOIltvH8uIyoIzb16RjKsT0VfFG7q3tHPaN9zzoDo8fHFb__RSQrxlHqA$
>
> Garson
>
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--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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