{"id":572,"date":"2006-08-11T11:29:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-11T11:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=572"},"modified":"2008-05-13T06:49:58","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T11:49:58","slug":"revenge-of-the-lowly-comma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2006\/08\/11\/revenge-of-the-lowly-comma\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge of the lowly comma"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favourite posts was the ‘zed versus zee’ <\/a>pronunciation debate, and not just because it still generates at least one hit a week. I just have a strange affection for the idiosyncracies of language. Like yesterday, I spent half an hour researching whether or not I had to use a serial comma<\/a>. Apparently, there are feuding factions on this one – and you thought Red Sox v Yankees, or Capulets v Montagues, or Tastes Great v Less Filling were blood feuds!<\/p>\n

A serial comma is the comma that may (or may not) come just before a conjunction in a list of items. Which one is right:<\/p>\n

We had a huge lunch with sandwiches, fruit and potato chips.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
* or *<\/em><\/div>\n
<\/em> <\/div>\n
We had a huge lunch with sandwiches, fruit, and potato chips.<\/div>\n

That second comma, after fruit, is a serial comma. I don’t tend to use them, and most newspaper style guides – including the Canadian Press and the NYT – agree with me. But Strunk and White and Fowler’s Modern English Style<\/em> beg to differ.<\/p>\n

What’s a girl to do? Grammar matters! If you don’t believe me, read this Globe and Mail<\/em> story <\/a>(hat tip to Fryman for the link) about a comma that may just cost Rogers Communication the tidy sum of $2.13M.<\/p>\n

I get other cool stuff in my in-box, too. Like AOL sent me no schwag whatsoever with their request for me to advertise their new Study Buddy <\/a>service for K – 12 school kids. I have long thought AOL was the devil, and haven’t really had the chance to check out this service, but hey, maybe one of you might find it helpful.<\/p>\n

And this is cool. There’s a wonderful organization in the States called First Book<\/a>, which I will happily endorse (also completely without schwag – see how magnanimous I am?), and they are offering a coupon for 10% off your purchase <\/a>at Borders (which I understand is a lovely book store in the US) for August 26 and 27 only. An additional 10% of your purchase will be donated to First Book. <\/p>\n

Now I’ve got to go figure whether I’m a serial commaist or not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favourite posts was the ‘zed versus zee’ pronunciation debate, and not just because it still generates at least one hit a week. I just have a strange affection for the idiosyncracies of language. Like yesterday, I spent half an hour researching whether or not I had to use a serial comma. Apparently, … Continue reading “Revenge of the lowly comma”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordplay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}