[Ads-l] Humorous Serial Comma Examples =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=94_?=Are They Genuine or Apocryphal?

[James Landau]

On    Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:56:13 Zone - 0400   ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote"
<begin quote> James Landau wrote:
> my favorite example: "heavy luggage, two dogs and my wife"
> . . .
> This one almost seems plausble that the writer meant that the "heavy luggage" conissted of "two dogs and my wife"

Interesting example of an absent serial comma, James. More details for
your citation are available via the Internet Archive.

The author, Tom McCahill, described an incident during which he almost
crashed his Oldsmobile. He avoided the accident with a swift sequence
of maneuvers, and he praised the quality of his car's suspension.

Date: 1960 March
Periodical: Mechanix Illustrated,
Article: The Oldsmobile
Author:  Tom McCahill,
Start Page 92, Quote Page 94 and 168,
Publisher: Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Database: Internet Archive

[Begin excerpt]
A guy in a little old car was creeping along ahead of me with one
wheel in the gutter. I pulled toward the center of the road to pass
him. Suddenly, without any signal whatsoever, this character made a
hard left turn directly across my path. My car was loaded to the
gunwales with heavy luggage, two dogs and my wife. By making his left
turn, the other car had completely blocked the two lanes of highway.
[End excerpt]

Garson<end quote>
If memory serves, McCahill later printed a letter he received, asking somethine like whether McCahill really intended to describe his wife as "heavy luggage".  Unfortunately Google Books did not display that letter.
James Landau
jjjrlandau at netscape.com

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