On 05/04/18 09:57, Peter Humphrey wrote:
Indeed, and that's more-or-less how I see the usual American insistence on a
comma before the "and" before the last item in a list, even though it gets in
the way and introduces ambiguity - the infamous Oxford comma.
But that's a whole new can of worms.
I think we should table that ...
I was taught that a comma separates items in a list, an "and" joins
them, and you do not mix the two! Indeed, when I did my English GCE
(that dates it!) I believe the Examining Board Style Guide explicitly
enforced that rule, and you lost marks for breaking it.
Personally, I do what feels right and I suspect the longer the list, the
more likely I am to use a comma before the last and.
But again this comes down to another moan of mine - why is "The Queen's
English" considered "correct", while let's say Yorkshire Dialect is
considered "wrong", when said dialect is hundreds of years old but the
Queen's English has probably only been around for about a century.
I'm all for standards, but the complaint should not be "it's wrong", but
"it breaks the standard", and importantly you need to know *which* standard!
Cheers,
Wol
