Hahaha the Oxford comma is also one my my hills…in the other direction. The “and” only removes ambiguity if the list items themselves are single, discrete items without conjunctions, sub-lists, or other complications. That’s why the only major style guide that recommends against the OC is AP, which is intended for print journalism, where the speed-of-reading increase is worth the loss of clarity…because print journalism is written for a 3rd-7th grade reading level and you just don’t need that clarity.
As soon as you get into complex, technical, or even just grammatically interesting prose, it’s helpful to maintain more rigorous punctuation (esp. comma and semicolon) usage to disambiguate the kinds of series that you’re going to need.
I am technical writer and was doing some writing where the standard was to NOT use the Oxford comma and it drove me insane. It took like 6 months to unlearn using it.
Hahaha the Oxford comma is also one my my hills…in the other direction. The “and” only removes ambiguity if the list items themselves are single, discrete items without conjunctions, sub-lists, or other complications. That’s why the only major style guide that recommends against the OC is AP, which is intended for print journalism, where the speed-of-reading increase is worth the loss of clarity…because print journalism is written for a 3rd-7th grade reading level and you just don’t need that clarity.
As soon as you get into complex, technical, or even just grammatically interesting prose, it’s helpful to maintain more rigorous punctuation (esp. comma and semicolon) usage to disambiguate the kinds of series that you’re going to need.
IMO. Hahaha
I am technical writer and was doing some writing where the standard was to NOT use the Oxford comma and it drove me insane. It took like 6 months to unlearn using it.
I had a similar experience. It always felt intuitively, almost morally wrong to be forced to write like that.
I’ll stand with you!
100% agree! I think this is a good visual that helps explain why it’s important.