Subj : Grammar in the Bar
To   : Ardith Hinton
From : Alexander Koryagin
Date : Fri Jun 28 2024 17:08:54


Hi, Ardith Hinton!
I read your message from 27.06.2024 03:06

 AK>> The comma before "and" is just an unnecessary thing that provides
 AK>> anything to make the understanding more clear.
 AH> It's a matter of style, not an absolute requirement, and some
 AH> people recommend using it only when it's needed to avoid confusion:

 AH> Through the window I saw John, a basketball player and a friend of
 AH> mine.

Are there three of them? ;-)
For me, this is not a list, but a sentence with the additional information, separated with a comma from the main clause. I believe that a _good_ list must consists of homogeneous items. Nobody can prohibit you, of course, to add to the list also a puddle, car, dog and a cat, but I think it will be rather a word game.

If we have a good list (of names, for instance) we would have:

Through the window I saw John, Peter and Paul, who staggered out from the pub.

 AH> What is this friend's name, and is he a basketball player? I have
 AH> no idea. I found the example in Wikipedia... I didn't personally
 AH> invent it.

As we say in Russia "Be simpler and people appreciate it". ;)

 AH> I asked for coffee with a breakfast of pancakes, bacon & eggs, hot
 AH> buttered toast and hash brown potatoes.

Yeah, no comma before potatoes. ;)

 AH> At 5WPM I can type an added comma without having to fret about
 AH> whether someone from ElseWhere will think I buttered the hash
 AH> browns *after* they were cooked. For me it's easier to use the
 AH> Oxford comma routinely in such a list than to go into detail about
 AH> why buttering such things on the plate may not work.

Yes, I agreed it is not important in chats. It maybe there are some doubts when you translate something. Old Everett Hertenstein taught me that the main thing is to be consistent. ;-)

 AH> If Denis asks I'll do the latter, but other folks may not care. :-Q
 AH> BTW, here's a joke Dallas found shortly before your message
 AH> arrived:

 AH> I like cooking my family and my pets. -- commas save lives

The comma after "cooking" is a holy one, of course. ;) But not the one which could be before "my pets".

 AK>> With the same success you can put "and" before every comma in the
 AK>> list. ;-)

 AH> I suppose you could in many cases. But as Anton says, in English it
 AH> is generally considered desirable to avoid unnecessary verbiage....
 AH> [chuckle].

An unnecessary comma before "and" is good mainly because nobody pays any attention to it. ;-)

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2024

--- 
 * Origin: news://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)

.