Talk:2995: University Commas

As Wikipedia notes, the Harvard comma is actually a thing, and synonymous with the Oxford comma. It's hard to understand whether Randall was just ignoring that. It's interesting to also look at how the various commas are meaningful. For instance, the Yale comma here appears to be just plain ungrammatical, you'd never put a comma between a verb and a its direct object; similarly the Cambridge comma and Princeton commas are ungrammatical, you'd never put one after the word "and." The Stanford comma is unambiguously normal and it's not clear how you could have such a list without it (absent replacement with a [Stanford?] semicolon). The Columbia comma is being used to separate "mac and cheese" into "mac, and[,] cheese" which changes the semantic meaning (arguably into something meaningless, but maybe we're listing Apple Computers or even Macintosh apple fruit abbreviated). The MIT comma is a cute programming joke for multiline lists. Maybe there are hidden trick meanings (like MIT) I'm missing. JohnHawkinson (talk) 23:03, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

On their own, few of them are intrinsically bad, in the right context.

• "Please, buy" - valid comma. Prefixed subclause (general plea).
• "Please buy, apples" - valid comma (more specific plea).
• "apples, mac" - valid comma (list-type).
• "mac, and" - valid comma (potentially a conjunctive sub-clause).
• "mac and, cheese" - valid comma (potentially a post-conjunctive sub-clause).
• "and cheese, milk" - valid comma (follow-up sub-clause).
• "cheese, milk, and" - Oxford comma. (Thus invalid, by default. IMO.)
• "milk and, bread." - ...would be valid, as above, except for the sentence ending.
• "and bread,." - Ok. Definitely the worst. (Except for the Oxford Comma, which is still worserer!)

Obviously, combinations of them (or counterpart lack of them, in some cases) can clash badly. Some can work well together, but using ()s, ;s or feetnete^* is often better than diving in and out of sub-clauses in the midst of a comma-bound list and potentially making it ambiguous whether you're diving in/out of a clarifying aside or replacing a non-terminating conjunction or perhaps one of the other usages to which a comma might apply.

^* Or just generally rewriting a multi-clausal sentence completely! 172.70.86.22 23:30, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Commas can go in a number of places in lists, and, occasionally, after the word "and". BunsenH (talk) 23:34, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Potentially, anything is possible... I can see how a sentence like "Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk, and, bread being out of stock, oats" would work, but I really don't see how the commas after "and" could work in this sentence. Transgalactic (talk) 08:34, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

If each item in a list shall be followed by a comma then the MIT comma is quite proper. SDT

The UCLA comma may refer to the 8 clap, a chant at UCLA which is begins with a string of 8 claps. 172.68.245.206 05:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I thought the UCLA & Michigan commas referred to quotes within citations. This isn't uncommon in literary studies, where you quote articles quoting books. Depending on your quotation style, this can result in a long string of 3-4 "commas" (as in: short lines in punctuation marks). If you place the quote between actual commas, make that 4-5. Transgalactic (talk) 08:34, 8 October 2024 (UTC)