If only to stave off the apositive. The one I always use with my Mom, the retired English teacher: "I had dinner with two assholes, my mom and my dad."
It might make for a good joke, but the truth is, only oxford comma people find those sentences confusing. Those who follow current standards read them without a problem, because they know the rule. Like many proper comma rules, you just avoid writing purposely ambiguous sentences. It's no different from "because clause" ambiguity. "Because" is a subordinating conjunction meaning it requires no comma, but it allows for ambiguous sentences like "He's not upset because he knows the rules." Does knowing the rules prevent him from being upset, or is he upset for a different reason from knowing the rules? You have several options here, depending on intent, but the best option is to not write confusing sentences in the first place.
Sentences cease to be confusing with proper application of Oxford commas. I suppose one could write, "We invited two strippers, as well as a fireman and a policeman." How much simpler to write, "We invited two strippers, a fireman, and a policeman."
I interpret it as someone writing a purposely ambiguous sentence to make a point. Is that a sentence you've needed frequently? Again, the solution is to not write ambiguous shit. Do you spell "read" as "reed" or "red" to help distinguish between the present and past tense? I doubt you do, but how many times have you had to reread a sentence because you read read as read or read as read? Pile on, if you like, but another truth is that members of writing forums use oxford commas disproportionately to the populous. An American survey put oxford comma usage at 57%, a little over half, but it's used far less in other countries. In fact, the Oxford University Press is the only major style authority outside the US that promotes them. It's a matter of style with no definitive agreement between style guides, but I don't see them as useful or necessary, personally.
It is an example. It's no more or less ambiguous than the sentence involving JFK and Stalin - it follows exactly the same structure, so why would it be ambiguous if the other one is not?
For what it’s worth, I’ve never encountered a sentence that an Oxford comma would have made substantially clearer, except for sentences designed to be confusing without it. Even if there is confusion, if the context of the sentence doesn’t clear it up then it’s a bad piece of writing. A good way to avoid confusion in the first place is to not write stupid, flagrantly ambiguous lists with no context to clarify them. The obvious one. Even if the silly meaning is the one intended, the lack of an Oxford comma isn’t going to the convey the proper sense of the sentence without further support: even if the strippers and the firemen and policemen are synonymous, at the level of an individual sentence the reader is usually going to interpret it in a common sense way and it will be necessary for the author to clarify things regardless of his dogmas on the question of commas, not least because the Oxford comma is not universally standard, and therefore should not be relied upon to convey sense when it isn’t clear to the reader, and it never is, if the writer they are reading uses it or not. Just because these sentences would be clearer if everybody used the oxford comma doesn’t mean they actually are, because not everybody uses the oxford comma. For ambiguity to really be cleare If a writer used the Oxford comma and the reader were aware of it, and the sentence were written to be interpreted on the basis of its own sense and not its context: only then would the Oxford comma be semantically significant. If you’re crazy enough to flip through a book or article before reading it just to find out if the author uses the Oxford comma in order to preempt potentially ambiguous situations that never occur in real life, then I don’t know what to say about that. In olden times, before people forced themselves into the cupcake tin of rationalistic, parsing, quibbling, modernity, or every text hast to have the utter clarity of a legal instrument, scribes wrote in scriptio continua, without punctuation or spaces, and in retrospect this has the grandeur of a gesture. Chad scriptio continua enjoyer vs virgin Oxford comma fan indeed.
Ambiguous and confusing aren't necessarily the same thing. It has one meaning as written and two possible meanings when someone's trying to make a point. Besides, why does this have to be an argument? Are people getting angry? They shouldn't. It's a semantics debate with no definitive conclusion. I sincerely apologize if my opinion upset anyone.
The High Priestess of the Order of the Holy Oxford Comma has had a wonderful time watching writers engage in verbal combat over this element of punctuation. Thanks to all, adherents and Philistines alike, for an invigorating exchange.
Sorry. I thought that package was mine, and went across the fence with it. And I meant to return it over here, and a drunk raccoon ran off with it. Can I get you a six-pack as compensation?
Yep, you know it's a writing forum when people get passionate about commas. And since it's a writing forum... the word 'argument' doesn't necessarily imply it's a heated interaction featuring angry or upset parties, just that both sides are in disagreement. Argument doesn't have to be a bad word!
One more comment, from Bryan Garner's Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage: "Whether to include the serial comma has sparked many arguments in law offices and judges' chambers. It is easily answered in favor of including the final comma, for its omission may cause ambiguities, whereas its inclusion never will." Further affiant sayeth not.
Why not simply regard the Oxford comma as one more tool to avoid ambiguity? You needn't use every tool in the toolbox, but if you find a situation in which it might make a difference, why not use it? It's not so much a rule as a suggestion.
Social anxiety got the better of me tonight. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and go to a wild Fringe festival party, but it wasn't the "dancing around in my underwear" part that scared me off (okay, a little bit) so much as the "being surrounded by strangers" thing. Staying home and listening to music by myself instead. I'll get my freak on another time, maybe.
I was at a commuter train station this morning when I heard some rather loud sobbing. I looked over to see a younger woman, maybe thirty something, laying on a bench surrounded by fairly decent luggage. She and her clothes were fairly clean and I quickly assessed that she may have very recently become homeless. The only cash I had was a five and I gave it to her, apologizing that I could not do more. That made the sobbing subside briefly.
