[HN Gopher] A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial com...
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A few words about that ten-million-dollar serial comma (2017)
Author : hoffmannesque
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-12-21 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Isn't the trailing comma at the end of lists (like Python,
| JavaScript, C#, and this sentence,) just an extension of the
| serial comma by one more step?
| aimor wrote:
| "the State of Maine specifically instructs drafters of legal
| statutes not to use the serial comma"
|
| Why would they ever suggest _not_ using the comma? Maybe they 'll
| change the instructions now.
| chrischapman wrote:
| I'm just seeing arrays everywhere. 1, 2, and 3 seems wrong to me.
| I reckon it should either be 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2 and 3. When a comma
| is followed directly by 'and' (or by 'or'), one of them just
| seems superfluous.
|
| On a side note, it makes you wonder if lawyers should take a
| course in programming. I wonder if these two arrays would have
| clarified matters:
|
| The Intent of the Contract: no overtime for the following: [
| canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing,
| storing, packing for shipment, distribution ] This would have
| included truck drivers because it separates packing from
| distribution.
|
| The Ruling: No overtime for the following: [ canning, processing,
| preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for [
| shipment, distribution ] ] This excludes truck drivers because it
| puts distribution with packing and truck drivers don't pack! The
| power of arrays.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It really does seem like simply adding more punctuation could
| save a lot of trouble.
| bcatanzaro wrote:
| The commas in the second Amendment and their meaning are probably
| worth Trillions of dollars. When you think of all the private
| arms and all the costs of gun violence in the US over the years
| which hinge on the individual right to bear arms, when
| punctuation in the second amendment can lead people to read the
| text as only holding a right to bear arms within a well-regulated
| Militia. Turns out that the commas weren't even standardized and
| lots of differently punctuated versions were ratified by the
| different states.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_Unit...
| jandrese wrote:
| I think that people would have interpreted that amendment the
| way they wanted to regardless of comma placement. They already
| blind themselves to the "well regulated militia" wording
| entirely, so ignoring an extra comma or two makes little
| difference.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Blind to and blinded by, depending on who you ask.
| Asooka wrote:
| The meaning seems obvious. A well regulated militia is
| required for the security of a free state. Therefore,
| people's freedom to keep and bear arms shall not be
| infringed. It declares an already existing freedom to keep
| and bear arms (as IIRC nothing on the federal level forbade
| it), and forbids its infringement by the state, with the goal
| of keeping the population familiar with the operation of
| firearms for the benefit of local militias.
|
| Or read the longer explanation by the Cornell Law School
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-
| conan/amendment-2/s... .
| skulk wrote:
| That explanation you linked is a whole lot of words, and
| after reading it I am less sure of what I thought the
| Second Amendment means than ever. Its meaning is anything
| but obvious.
|
| I say this because there is nothing about self-defense in
| the text of the Second Amendment, and yet the SCOTUS has
| held that self-defense is one of the rights that cannot be
| infringed. It's not at all obvious how a statement about
| the necessity of a well-regulated militia has anything to
| do with personal self-defense with a handgun. I can see a
| world where the DC handgun ban was upheld by the SCOTUS
| because long guns (for the well-regulated militia) were
| still available and personal self-defense isn't covered
| under the wording of 2A. Of course, if you bring the
| zeitgeist into view this seems absurd, but in a vacuum
| where the 2A is the only reference it makes logical sense.
| Gunax wrote:
| Well, we are talking about a body that finds the
| constitution protects privacy, even though CTRL-F
| 'privacy' has zero results.
|
| I am not saying they are right or wrong, but any pretense
| that the courts rule based on the text of the law should
| be discarded.
|
| The reality is they find rights and laws that seem
| reasonable to their own selves, and disregard precedent
| that is _poorly argued_ (ie they don 't like the result).
|
| The alternative is perhaps that we are stuck with Plessy
| v Ferguson until the end of time or a constitutional
| amendment is ratified (end of time seems more plausible).
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The only way to misread the Second Amendment is to assume that
| it, alone among the other amendments in the original Bill of
| Rights, was written to constrain the people rather than the
| government.
|
| In other words, you have to approach the question with an
| agenda -- and a conclusion -- already in mind. Bad for
| intellectual honesty regardless of how you feel about gun
| ownership rights.
| cafard wrote:
| Which government? Two states still had established churches
| when the First Amendment took effect.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If the framers hadn't felt the First Amendment to be
| necessary, based on their awareness of both classical and
| all-too-recent history, they wouldn't have bothered
| including it. Arguably the same is true for the Second
| Amendment.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Textualists might be able to make your argument. Any
| constitutional scholar worth their salt could not.
| brunellus wrote:
| If you don't understand Oxford Commas, you aren't fluent in
| English.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| There is a classic programming joke where, to my eyes, the Oxford
| comma is a must:
|
| "There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things,
| cache invalidation, and off by one errors."
|
| Without the comma it seems weird to me:
|
| "There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things,
| cache invalidation and off by one errors."
| hoffmannesque wrote:
| https://archive.md/QuvyZ
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210824190938/https://www.newyor...
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| And the $2M comma issue from Canada
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-2-mil...
|
| And Rogers Won.
|
| http://www.slaw.ca/2007/08/22/rogers-wins-comma-contract-dis...
| robocat wrote:
| Language buffs take note -- Page 7 of the contract states: The
| agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years
| from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five
| year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior
| notice in writing by either party." Rogers' intent in
| 2002 was to lock into a long-term deal of at least five years.
| But when regulators with the Canadian Radio-television and
| Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) parsed the wording, they
| reached another conclusion. The validity of the contract
| and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point
| -- the second comma in the sentence. Had it not been
| there, the right to cancel wouldn't have applied to the first
| five years of the contract and Rogers would be protected from
| the higher rates it now faces. "Based on the rules of
| punctuation," the comma in question "allows for the termination
| of the [contract]at any time, without cause, upon one-year's
| written notice," the regulator said.
| kevinpet wrote:
| Honestly, that's just ambiguous in general. The one year
| prior notice should specify that it is prior to each renewal.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Why, commas not withstanding, should Maine prevent people in the
| food supply chain business from getting overtime. I am pinko-
| Euro-liberal and even I think that's government meddling. Is
| there a historic reason for this if just labour-bashing ?
| gopher_space wrote:
| Easy to miss line in the article says it's due to avoiding
| spoilage in harvested food.
|
| Absolutely labor bashing.
| jkubicek wrote:
| > Lest we lose perspective, this law on the books of the State
| of Maine applies to people who work with perishable foods, and
| the point is that pokey employees should not be rewarded for
| taking their sweet time getting the goods to market.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Why, commas not withstanding, should Maine prevent people in
| the food supply chain business from getting overtime.
|
| This provision doesn't prohibit overtime pay, it excludes that
| group of people from government-mandated overtime pay. A
| company could still choose to pay it's workers overtime, or
| workers could demand/negotiate that.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| "During the New Deal Era, President Roosevelt struck a bargain
| with Southern Democrats: they would support worker rights
| legislation so long as their farmworkers (and other
| predominantly African-American workers, such as domestic
| workers) were exempt. Thus, Congress excluded farmworkers from
| the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA), the main
| federal law that protects workers who join and organize labor
| unions, and from the federal minimum wage and overtime
| protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938"
|
| https://thenaturalfarmer.org/article/brief-history-farmworke...
| dmurray wrote:
| The government isn't preventing them from negotiating a better
| contract with their employers, it's just refusing to enshrine
| their entitlement to overtime into state law. From that point
| of view, this carve-out _reduces_ government interference in
| labour relations.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I think it could be argued that carving out an exception
| counts as increased interference because it means the
| government is inserting itself between all workers and
| employers in order to mandate job classifications. Without
| exceptions, businesses would not have to spend time/money
| defending their assertion that this worker is A and that
| worker is B and thus is less entitled to greater pay.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The governments here in the US fill two roles. Oppressing
| workers and protecting them. You never know what it is going to
| be from one moment to the next and we all await verdicts to
| cases like this, not knowing WTF is going to happen.
|
| Unions are protected with various laws...then court cases pops
| up where there is some debate about if a Union can legally
| strike or even negotiate.
|
| In my mind it is very clear. Do the workers have leverage? If
| so, then "the company??" has to negotiate...just like they
| would with any business partner.
|
| In the end the courts are used as a bulwark against worker
| rights. Any victories for workers just give substance to the
| idea of governments intervening in business negotiations when
| board rooms want to socialize expenses.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > "The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato
| sauce over rice, broccoli salad and bread pudding with chocolate
| sauce." A comma after "broccoli salad" would have cleared the
| table before dessert.
|
| I think if you write a sentence that's highly dependent on the
| reader paying careful attention to where an easy-to-miss comma
| is, you assume all readers know what Oxford commas are, and the
| sentence generates a lot of discussion about how it can be
| misinterpreted, it's just a bad sentence. I think instead of
| debating about Oxford commas as a band aid, you should
| restructure the sentence so most people will understand it first
| time without having to think too hard.
|
| This feels similar to overly clever code which goes against the
| principle of least surprise that shouldn't pass code review.
|
| "The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato sauce
| over rice and broccoli salad, followed by bread pudding with
| chocolate sauce."
|
| Edit: Fair point that the dessert is clear now but not the main.
| Either way, I'd prefer restructuring the sentence to make it
| clearer where practical e.g. adding in a few extra words like
| "with a side of", "dessert", "followed by".
| blockwriter wrote:
| This is likely just me, but I find sentences where the
| independent clause is bookended by an introductory and
| dependent clause to be inelegant. I never write them.
| usui wrote:
| Can you give an example?
| [deleted]
| dqv wrote:
| It's easily noticed when omitted improperly and more easily
| overlooked when done correctly.
| [deleted]
| kbenson wrote:
| Wat this all is, to my eyes, is people putting form over
| function. If you care about the message, you consider the
| people receiving it and try to reduce ambiguity as much as
| possible. If you care about the medium, then you make trade-
| offs about aesthetics which may reduce legibility but appeal to
| some other quality that is being considered.
|
| There's obviously a place for both. Poetry does not necessarily
| benefit by removing ambiguity. Technical manuals do. Depending
| on what the author is attempting to do, different choices may
| be made.
|
| In contracts meant to define actions and behaviors, ambiguity
| is not beneficial (at least not for anyone that's not trying to
| swindle someone else). There are constructs or forms that can
| be used to reduce ambiguity, and they should be used where
| appropriate. For example, if a bulleted list is allowed, that
| removes quite a bit of ambiguity in some cases.
|
| Unfortunately, for contracts we are forced to use an imprecise
| medium (natural language) to define what we want to be a
| precise set of constraints. There will always be some friction
| there where one for not accurately account for what's meant by
| the other. Additionally, accurately describing all relevant
| facets of reality that might apply is hard.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| The next day I enjoyed - pan-roasted oysters
| with a tomato sauce over rice - boccoli salad -
| bread pudding with chocolate sauce.
|
| There, I fixed it.
| jonas21 wrote:
| There's still ambiguity as to whether it's:
| (pan-roasted oysters) with (a tomato sauce over rice)
|
| or: (pan-roasted oysters with a tomato
| sauce) over rice
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think there is. It is the second. The clear
| convention is that each meal item is a list element.
| djrogers wrote:
| >"The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato
| sauce over rice and broccoli salad, followed by bread pudding
| with chocolate sauce."
|
| Your version is even more ambiguous:
|
| Were the oysters separate from or included in the tomato sauce,
| and was said sauce served over rice, or was it served on the
| broccoli salad as well? Or perhaps it was a salad comprised of
| both rice and broccoli, over which a tomato sauce was poured -
| either with or without the pan seared oysters?
|
| Just use the freaking commas - it makes everyone's life a lot
| easier.
| intrasight wrote:
| I'm a fan of hyphens:
|
| "...oysters with a tomato sauce over rice, broccoli salad - and
| bread pudding ..."
| sixothree wrote:
| Aren't semicolons the correct english list separator?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's another argument in itself. I was always taught that
| phrases set apart by semicolons need to be capable of
| standing alone as complete sentences, so it's jarring to
| see them used to delimit nouns or noun phrases in a list.
|
| At the same time, the language clearly needs a comma-like
| operator with higher precedence than the comma, and it's
| very hard to argue against pressing the semicolon into that
| role.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The semicolon is often used as a superlist separator,
| with commas used for the sublists.
| drcongo wrote:
| I'm having palpitations at this.
| a4isms wrote:
| I'm a big fan of em dashes, which--when used like this--
| signal a parenthetical remark.
| robocat wrote:
| Parentheses are way better than em-dashes for parenthetical
| remarks.
|
| A set of parentheses make the syntax unambiguous.
|
| An em-dash is "that multifaceted, all-purpose punctuation
| mark that can act as a parenthesis, comma, colon, semicolon
| or even quotation mark".
|
| Also I have spent too much time with computer languages,
| and I personally find the lack of spacing around the
| parenthetical em-dash to be an ugly syntax. Then again, I
| don't closely adhere to the English rules of punctuation,
| because some of the standard rules make for ugly writing
| IMHO.
|
| Mostly I try to avoid parenthetical statements because they
| are often a sign of lazy wishy-washy writing. I guess em-
| dashes are OK in novels where the text context usually
| makes the semantic meaning clear enough.
|
| Edit: "The Chicago Manual as a style guide calls for no
| spacing before and after dashes. In British usage and in
| some style guides, spaced en dashes are used place of an em
| dash. Sometimes the space you see before and after the dash
| is actually a special character called a 'hair space' or a
| 'thin space.'". https://danieljtortora.com/blog/en-dashes-
| and-em-dashes-part...
|
| Edit: "Most newspapers -- and all that follow AP style --
| insert a space before and after the em dash.".
| https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html
|
| Edit: From C2: "U+2014 EM DASH is used to make a break--
| like this--in the flow of a sentence. (Some typographers
| prefer to use U+2013 EN DASH set off with spaces - like
| this - to make the same kind of break.) This kind of dash
| is commonly represented with a typewriter as a double-
| hyphen."
|
| Edit: Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Em_dash
| bee_rider wrote:
| Functionally, I guess the only advantage that the em-dash
| has is that it fails loudly and miserably when nested.
| For example:
|
| Parentheticals -- already a bad -- although sometimes
| unavoidable -- habit of mine -- should never be nested.
|
| Completely incomprehensible.
|
| Parentheticals (already a bad (although sometimes
| unavoidable) habit of mine) should never be nested.
|
| Dangerously comprehensible.
|
| However, em-dashes do make the reading voice in my head
| change over to an old-timey radio announcer so that is
| cool.
| Asooka wrote:
| My two cents against the use of the Oxford comma would be that
| all of Europe's languages are written without it. Surely if
| neither German, nor Spanish, nor Finnish, nor Lithuanian, nor
| Hungarian, nor Bulgarian - if none of them need the Oxford
| comma, English probably doesn't either.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Without regard to the actual conclusion, I don't one should
| necessarily apply lessons learned in sensible languages to
| this abominable offspring of German and French that we, for
| some reason, use.
| [deleted]
| jrms wrote:
| I would write "... and bread pudding with chocolate sauce as
| desert."
| ohazi wrote:
| > "The next day, I enjoyed pan-roasted oysters with a tomato
| sauce over rice and broccoli salad, followed by bread pudding
| with chocolate sauce."
|
| This just moves the ambiguity.
|
| Is the tomato sauce over rice, with a side of broccoli salad?
| Or is the sauce over [rice and broccoli salad]?
|
| In this case "rice and broccoli salad" doesn't really sound
| like a dish, but why the fuck wouldn't you just use a tiny
| piece of syntax to make it super clear, rather than relying on
| the reader hopefully having similar culinary sensibilities?
| [deleted]
| seanwilson wrote:
| How does a comma alone fix the sentence I quoted though? It
| could then be read as the tomato sauce going over the bread
| pudding. I think if you really want super clear, restructure
| the sentence further.
| thom wrote:
| Many people use the Oxford comma in every case because they don't
| trust their own judgement about ambiguity. That's always struck
| me as pretty lazy, despite proponents insisting it's some sort of
| principled stance.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _That's always struck me as pretty lazy, despite proponents
| insisting it's some sort of principled stance._
|
| You don't need the comma before "despite", but I don't think
| you're lazy because of that.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| A writer should strive for clarity over style whenever
| possible.
| smegsicle wrote:
| personally, i generally find the absence of an oxford comma
| slightly jarring even without any ambiguity issue- i feel it
| matches the way i read and speak (midwest en-us)
|
| conversely, i only use semicolons in javascript when required..
| silisili wrote:
| Same. Seeing text without them bothers me unreasonably. I know
| some writing guides advise not using them, but I reject that
| reality and substitute my own.
| tzs wrote:
| There are examples where using an Oxford comma makes a sentence
| ambiguous and there are examples where not using an Oxford comma
| makes a sentence ambiguous.
|
| In all the examples I've seen where _using_ an Oxford comma makes
| a sentence ambiguous that sentence contains an appositive phrase
| that is set off with commas and that is what creates the
| ambiguity.
|
| Commas are the most common way to set off an appositive phrase,
| but it is generally considered acceptable to use em dashes or
| parenthesis instead. Switch to using one of those instead of
| commas for your appositives, always use the Oxford comma, and I
| think that clears up all the ambiguous cases.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Ahh, one of my pet peeves! I like and use the Oxford comma in my
| emails but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one.
|
| Here's an English SE question with some interesting answers:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/412/should-i-put....
|
| Here's Another answer with great visual illustration of the
| strippers, JFK, and Stalin example:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/172671/oxford-co....
|
| My other sensibilities include _not_ putting two spaces at
| sentence end (among other things this shows that you're most
| probably 40+) and writing PowerPoint slide titles in sentence
| case rather than title case.
| alex_c wrote:
| >My other sensibilities include not putting two spaces at
| sentence end (among other things this shows that you're most
| probably 40+)
|
| That's a silly generalization. I'm only 39.
| nomel wrote:
| > but have observed am in the extreme minority on this one.
|
| The desire to make sentences unambiguous seems to be very rare,
| so this isn't too surprising.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > My other sensibilities include not putting two spaces at
| sentence end (among other things this shows that you're most
| probably 40+) and writing PowerPoint slide titles in sentence
| case rather than title case.
|
| Yep, guilty on both counts, and over 40. I feel no particular
| inclination to change, either, since neither seems to be
| anything more than personal preference. Someone will always
| disagree, so I just stick to the way I've always done it.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The "two spaces" thing also complicated by the fact that in
| so many contexts the extra space is simply ignored, as
| browsers ignore additional whitespace by default and so much
| writing and reading takes place through a browser or some
| other thing rendering HTML these days.
|
| Of course you can do things like "pre" formatting or
| insertion of non-breaking spaces to force their rendering,
| but that's somewhat rare. I wonder if HN does that? Doesn't
| look like it.
| closetohome wrote:
| I find this muddied even more by the shortcut for "start a
| new sentence" being a double space on mobile keyboards.
| Seems like a habit I'd pick up even if I'd learned to type
| on a phone.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| I wonder if programmers use the Oxford comma more than the
| general population. It just feels more consistent to me to have
| all items delineated with commas (or semicolon if items contain
| commas:
| http://sana.aalto.fi/awe/punctuation/semicolons/02.html).
| [deleted]
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| It's not consistent, though. Nobody uses the Oxford comma in
| a list of two.
|
| In the Oxford regime, "apples and oranges", when prefixed
| with another fruit, becomes "bananas, apples, and oranges".
|
| If you wanted to implement an "insert commas" algorithm
| recursively, choosing Oxford requires passing an extra bit
| along to signal to the terminal case (joining the last two
| list elements) that there are > 2 elements total. Inelegant
| to my mind.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It definitely appeals the my sense of logic and clarity.
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