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🗓️ 8 July 2011
⏱️ 5 minutes
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0:00.0 | Grammar girl here, I'm always on the lookout for hot grammar news. |
0:08.8 | In this week we had some. |
0:10.6 | Twitter went crazy with the news that the Oxford University Press had changed their style |
0:15.4 | guide to drop the Oxford comma. |
0:18.4 | It turns out it was a false alarm. |
0:20.2 | I'll tell you what happened, how to use the serial comma, and what I think is most interesting, |
0:25.4 | who invented the serial comma. |
0:28.1 | So we're all on the same page, I'll review the serial comma first. |
0:32.0 | When you put a comma before the word AND in a list, in a series, it's called a serial |
0:37.3 | comma. |
0:38.4 | For example, if you write squiggly comma, ardvark comma, and grammar girl, that comma after |
0:44.1 | ardvark and before AND is the serial comma. |
0:47.9 | Some people use the serial comma and some don't. |
0:50.5 | I prefer to use the serial comma because I believe it adds clarity, but it's a style choice. |
0:56.2 | For example, the Chicago manual of style recommends using the serial comma, but the style |
1:01.2 | book for the associated press recommends leaving the comma out unless doing so would make |
1:05.8 | a sentence confusing. |
1:08.3 | If you want more details and examples of how to use the serial comma, I also covered it |
1:12.5 | in episode 256. |
1:16.0 | So what was the hull of blue last week about the comma? |
1:19.2 | Well, the serial comma is also known as the Oxford comma, because using the serial comma |
1:24.9 | is the style recommended by the influential Oxford University Press. |
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