New APPS

Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science. Mostly Philosophy.

recent posts

about

    Hilary Putnam doesn’t give an eff about the Oxford Comma

    IndexA couple of times I've co-written with people who don't use the Oxford comma. It can end up being a big headache when the usage isn't consistent, and then it's also weird to realize just how many times you conjoin three or more words in a phrase.

    Putnam's book came out in Cambridge University Press, so I guess it's O.K. that he didn't use it.

    The wikipedia article is quite nice, though the anti-Oxford comma section isn't sourced and the supposed ambiguity introduced by the Oxford comma is unconvincing, because the same phrase is also ambiguous without it. The pro-Oxford comma section gives examples that are ambiguous without it and not ambiguous with it, e.g. a book dedication that reads "to my parents, Any Rand and God" versus "to my parents, Ayn Rand, and God."

    Vampire Weekend's eponymous song is pretty, though it's possibly NSFW because of f-bombs. I don't know what it's about, but the odd specificity of the lyrics ("Why would you lie about how much coal you own?") work very well. When I first heard the song I though it was pro-Oxford comma, and was pretty disappointing when I read the lyrics.

    After the kerfuffle over Weird Al's song, pro-Oxford Comma partisans are probably just going to have to continue to wait for our anthem.

    Posted in

    6 responses to “Hilary Putnam doesn’t give an eff about the Oxford Comma”

    1. Anon Avatar
      Anon

      I’m staunchly pro-OC, but surely there are better arguments than those in the wiki article?
      All of their examples of ambiguity caused by the OC seem equally ambiguous without it, and my intuition is that the ambigious non-OC sentences are more common than the ambiguous OC sentences.
      Any Oxford comma haters out there want to offer better arguments?
      I’m more interested in the psychology of grammar disputes. I have strong feelings about them, but also recognize how absurd my strong feelings about them are.
      Frankly, both sides seem psychologically identical to me: committed to a view for pathological reasons, trying to justify that commitment logically, then decrying the other team for their irrationality.
      My pathological attachment is to whatever rules I spent long hours as a child learning, practicing, and being tested on. After all that effort and time, it’s really annoying to be told I’m doing it wrong.
      On the other side, I suspect the pathology is pretty simple: netspeak has made most of our writing informal, so we no longer take as much care to follow the old rules, and so where large numbers of people forget or don’t know the rules, a new usage becomes dominant. The truth is, it’s not better (or worse), it’s an accidental shift due to mass error, but we want to believe we’ve changed usage for logical reasons, so we come up for arguments on behalf of the new usage.
      Part of me wants to wish a pox on both houses, since both are trying to dress up their prejudices as higher reason. But dressing up my own prejudices, I can’t help feeling it’s more unjust to ask those trained and practiced in an old usage to change than to demand those with familiarity with both old and new to change. Either way, a substantial number of people are inconvenienced and annoyed, of course.

      Like

      Reply
    2. Bill Wringe Avatar
      Bill Wringe

      I find this one to make the case for the OC irrefutable http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012652.html

      Like

      Reply
    3. bzfgt Avatar
      bzfgt

      I just use it when it sounds right, and don’t when it doesn’t. Isn’t that what any reasonable person should do?

      Like

      Reply
    4. Anon Avatar
      Anon

      Sorry, to clarify: I meant are there better arguments against the OC? I just can’t see what the other side has against it.

      Like

      Reply
    5. Neal Hebert Avatar
      Neal Hebert

      I’m one of Jon’s cowriters who doesn’t use the Oxford comma. There are honestly only two reasons I don’t use it: as an editor who’s done layout, it uses up more space in layout than otherwise (a bigger deal with newspapers than anything else), and because I try to avoid using any non-necessary comma in a sentence. The latter likely isn’t a big deal in academic writing, but when writing for non-experts it’s a good idea to minimize commas. When I teach undergraduates my own work, they tend to understand my writing best when there are fewer commas mixing them up.
      These won’t be convincing arguments to anyone who likes the Oxford comma, of course. And it’s worth pointing out that Jon was absolutely right to tell me that I had to use the Oxford comma in my chapter of an Oxford anthology.

      Like

      Reply
    6. Lance Haynes Avatar
      Lance Haynes

      When the OC is not used, I pause to consider the author’s intent. Often the pause is short because the intent is obvious–but the pause, for the sake of my concern for my own accurate understanding of what I read, is necessary. When the OC is used, I do not pause to consider the author’s intent because the intent is clear. What part of that is ambiguous?
      Perhaps I have a pathological misunderstanding?

      Like

      Reply

    Leave a reply to Neal Hebert Cancel reply