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)

Sorry, no: "and," is bad grammar, except when illustrating a dramatic (but grammatically wrong) verbal pause; ", and" is fine for noting a pause used to divide a list, but it's best to use semicolons in a divided list. IE: "milk; bread; mac and cheese; blood, sweat, and tears". (Again, "blood, sweat and tears", would be atypical cadence if spoken aloud; therefore, the comma.) I don't care what style guides say, only what works well.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 15:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

What's grammatically wrong about something like "I drink beer and, on occasion, cider"?

Thank you for the "and, on occasion, beer and cider" example. Looking only at the given sentence about a shopping list, I wondered if the subordinate clause suggestion was edit-mangle or a very strange dialect difference. JimJJewett (talk) 02:34, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't "and, on occasion, beer and cider" given as an example. It was "[I drink] beer and, on occasion, cider". Depending upon what comes before the "and,", it might be the same sort of thing, but "beer and, on occasion, cider" probably is intended to mean "... beer (mostly) and cider (occasionally)". Your vesion might be somethng like "I drink beer, cider and, on occasion, beer and cider" => "I drink beer (frequently), cider (frequently) and a beer-and-cider-mix (occasionally)".

(Noting that I've never tried mixing beer and cider, although I have done it with wine and cider. Long story. Though mostly it was mixed in my stomach, not pre-mixed. Probably made me the absolute drunkest I ever have been, but the effects took more time to take effect than those who were deliberately plying me with the drink(s) counted on, so their 'plan' sort of failed... I was younger and foolisher, but so were they! These days, I prefer my beer (typically a bitter, maybe a stout, generally not lagers/etc) unblended in any way. The same with my whisky (single malt, and in preference to whiskey). And wine's fine, but with a meal. Don't really go for ciders these days. If I want something appley, I prefer fruit juice, and if I want something fizzy (not all ciders are fizzy, but most of the major ones are) then give me a Pepsi Max (or something similar - I love the taste of aspartame in the morning!). But I rarely mix anything more than cordial/concentrate and water.)

As to how people mangle/dialectise subordinate clauses, I couldn't say. I think it's grammatically odd to say "Write me!" (for "Write to me!), or to say "lit it on fire" (I'd just say that I "lit it", or "set fire to it"), so there's probably some strangeness of expectations between sublinguistic jurisdictions. 172.68.205.165 15:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Also, the cadence of "blood, sweat and tears" has nothing to do with the commas you give it. This isn't a case of marking verbal ticks, with... uh... transcribed notation. Either for official recording purposes or in the pre-scripting of speech for later performance. One is free to nuance the phrase how you want, with or without OC. The main issue about the OC is whether a list (of more than two items) should have each (non-final) element followed by a comma? Or are commas placeholders only for the "and"/"or"s that are omited? (And my opinion is that it is the latter, all else being equal. I apply that to semicolon-separated lists, insofar as I won't end with "...; penultimate item; and last item", but prefer to omit the and (or or ), casting whether it's a list of options or an accumulation by the introductory/follow-up contextualisation of that list.)

But, whichever standard you prefer, there will be cases where it reads wrongly to others. If you're lucky enough to spot it, then you can look to what you can do to adjust the sentence to remove ambiguity. This does not normally mean adding in any old commas where,,,,, you think a Pinter Pause is needed. (Maybe an ellipsis, in normal writing.) The fact that a grammatical comma may be where a spoken pause may crop up is not because the comma causes the pause. The verbal pause is (if not garbled out) caused by the same understanding of how clauses/etc require intoning under the circumstances.

But it is a rhetorical choice as to whether to intone "blood..., sweat... and tears" or "blood, sweat and... tears" or any number of other pausing strategies, as it is how you faithfully transcribe what has already been intoned. When merely listing these in text, your chosen style of grammar is the master. 172.70.160.134 19:44, 9 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 172.68.245.206 05:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

The UCLA comma may refer to the 8 clap, a chant at UCLA which is begins with a string of 8 claps. 172.68.205.178 (talk) 07:33, 8 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

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)

I think the tirade against the Oxford comma in the article is not relevant for understanding the comic. "'To my mother, Ayn Rand and God' does not" is not saying that Ayn Rand is the mother. To express that one should write "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and to God". Thus the ambiguity can be resolved. I believe one of the editors is mixing in their personal taste here. --172.71.160.71 09:03, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Tirade? Hardly. It explains when it doesn't help (and when it might).

And I think you misread. "'To my mother, Ayn Rand and God' does not" indeed does not say that Ayn Rand is the mother. In fact it explicitly says that "'To my mother, Ayn Rand and God'"... erm... does not say the thing that 'To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God' potentially does. (See table below.)

The choice of how to disambiguate "my mother, who is Ayn Rand", as a concept, is another thing and has multiple options. Disambiguating in the direction of a simple list is the contention surrounding the Oxford(/Serial) Comma itself (it is, by definition, being used in the list format), given that some circumstances are most helped by it and others are most helped by its absence. If you're strongly for the OC, you'll hopefully rewrite problematic OCed formulations so that you can use it. If you're strongly against it you should change problamatic non-OCed versions so that you can better go without one. 172.70.85.128 10:21, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Inspired (a bit) by the Three Laws permutation table, a set of possible ambiguations from the straight list...

A	B	C	"A, B and C"	"A, B, and C"
my parents	Ayn Rand	God	"my parents (who are Ayn Rand and God)"	list only*
my parents	God	Ayn Rand	"my parents (who are God and Ayn Rand)"	list only*
Ayn Rand	my parents	God	list only*	list only*
Ayn Rand	God	my parents	list only*	"Ayn Rand (who is God), and my parents"
God	my parents	Ayn Rand	list only*	list only*
God	Ayn Rand	my parents	list only*	"God (who is Ayn Rand), and my parents"

-* - Assuming no other "All You Zombies" and/or divine incarnation scenarios.

...maybe it's too early in the morning, but I'm sure I'm missing other ambiguities I've commented on before. (Without necesarily going into the asterisked territories.) Anyone want to amend this? 172.68.186.105 09:56, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Love it! Transgalactic (talk) 10:14, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

There's additional potential ambiguity if you go with the singular "my mother" as opposed to the plural "my parents". "My mother, Ayn Rand, and God" (with the Oxford comma) could be listing 2 separate entities while indicating that my mother is Ayn Rand, or could be listing 3 separate entities. "My mother, Ayn Rand and God" (without the Oxford comma) could be referring to a single entity while indicating that my mother is both Ayn Rand and God, or listing 3 separate entities. (In a phrase like, "My mother, Ayn Rand and God, gave it to me," the comma after God indicates that it's one entity, but you lose that clarity with "It was given to me by my mother, Ayn Rand and God." 172.68.70.66 14:25, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

What if my mother, Ayn Rand, and God are actually the trinity?172.69.195.87 08:23, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I myself, was fully expecting one of the examples given, to be: "To my God and mother, Ayn Rand". ProphetZarquon (talk) 15:15, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I realize that this comic focuses on University commas, however I feel that some mention should be made about the Walken Comma and the Shatner Comma! 172.70.114.103 10:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

What, do you,    mean by,   that? 172.69.195.106 13:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Here's the explanation: Walken and Shatner Commas 162.158.62.228 11:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Mac and cheese is probably not well-known outside the US (especially not under that name). --172.71.160.115 13:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

As usual, the Brits don't know how to name food. "Macaroni cheese" sounds like the macaroni is made of cheese. But I added an explanation and link to the Wikipedia page. Barmar (talk) 14:30, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't be silly, that would clearly be named "cheese macaroni". Macaroni cheese is clearly cheese for macaroni, and it's simply polite to serve macaroni to have it with as well. 172.71.151.114 14:39, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

By the logic of your second interpretation, "cheese macaroni" is clearly macaroni for cheese. The lexical existence of this separate form of macaroni begs the question: what kind of macaroni goes best with macaroni cheese? The plain kind or cheese macaroni? The answer is neither! The best kind of macaroni to serve with macaroni cheese is clearly macaroni-cheese macaroni. But then what kind of cheese goes best with that? None other than (macaroni cheese)-macaroni cheese, which in turn is best served with ((macaroni cheese) macaroni)-cheese macaroni. This interleaving of macaroni and cheese never ends, meaning that no matter where you choose to stop, you will always end up with a sub-optimal pairing. So it's best to just not eat any form of cheese with any form of macaroni, to avoid disappointment. As an aside, the logic of your first interpretation implies that "macaroni cheese" is actually cheese that's made of macaroni. MelodiousThunk (talk) 12:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

As opposed to 'mac and cheese', which sounds like a particularly unappetising dish made using a waterproof coat.172.68.186.92 15:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Oddly, US English goes the other way with "grilled cheese", neglecting to mention that the cheese should be placed between slices of bread before grilling; in British English, it would generally be called a "cheese toastie". (Until looking it up, I was under the mistaken belief that it was a name for what we would call "cheese on toast", which also involves grilling the cheese, on the toast.) - IMSoP (talk) 21:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

'Mac & cheese' is, sadly, probably more common in the UK now than the proper 'macaroni cheese'.141.101.99.47 08:25, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to the added red text in the Notation column, but it needs to be explained in the Explanation column. 162.158.90.8 00:18, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Could this, at least in part, be about typography, not grammar and style? The depicted commas are not all the same. Divad27182 (talk) 10:42, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Specifically, MIT is the home of the Rust language, which prominently uses trailing commas after the last item in a list as a matter of programming style.172.70.214.211

ABAP uses dots as end-of-command delimiters. 162.158.202.92 (talk) 06:13, 11 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

! UNRESOLVED VERSION CONFLICT !

There has been a problem with different versions. I shifted a paragraph, but the version that got saved had 1615 characters less than before. A whole lot of rambling had been removed from the explanation, but there was no version conflict warning and no other saved revision in the revision history. I didn't want to take credit for the changes, though I appreciated them, so I undid my edit, then redid my shift of paragraphs, and hoped that the other editor would reconcile the versions. That didn't happen. I'm writing this note to draw attention to the "lost edit". Transgalactic (talk) 18:28, 11 October 2024 (UTC)