Tuesday, March 21, 2017

The Oxford comma and how my writing style differs because I am a nerd

One thing you may notice that is missing from my writing is the Oxford comma, also knows as the Harvard or "serial" comma. What is the Oxford comma, you ask? Let's see what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

In English language punctuation, a serial comma or series comma (also called an Oxford comma or a Harvard comma[1]) is a comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and or or) in a series of three or more terms. For example, a list of three countries might be punctuated either as "France, Italy, and Spain" (with the serial comma), or as "France, Italy and Spain" (without the serial comma).[2][3][4]

Opinions among writers and editors differ on whether to use the serial comma. In American English, a majority of style guides mandate use of the serial comma, including APA style,[5] The Chicago Manual of StyleThe MLA Style ManualStrunk and White's Elements of Style,[6] and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual. In contrast, the Associated Press Stylebook and the stylebook published by The Canadian Press for journalistic writing advise against it. It is used less often in British English,[7] but some British style guides require it, including The Oxford Style Manual.[8] According to The Oxford Companion to the English Language, "Commas are used to separate items in a list or sequence ... Usage varies as to the inclusion of a comma before and in the last item ... This practice is controversial and is known as the serial comma or Oxford comma, because it is part of the house style of Oxford University Press."[9] Some use it only where necessary to avoid ambiguity,[10] in contrast to such guides as Garner's Modern American Usage, which advocate its routine use to avoid ambiguity.

This is actually one of the many differences and nuances you may notice in my writing style. I actually honed the majority of my writing skills on the internet.. mostly on forums and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). At a very pivotal point in my development with the English language and from a very early age, the internet was my primary form of communication. IRC, more than anything else, forced me to become a very fast and accurate typist. Making a typo or using most forms of abbreviation are generally frowned upon by the citizens of most IRC channels.

During this same time frame, I also took up programming. This may have actually hurt more than anything else. In programming, you must be very careful to have a certain type of syntax, or format, to every line of code you write. The order and manner in which you open and close any type of quotations, brackets, parenthesis, etc. are vital to getting your code to compile and run properly. This may have been where my aversion to the serial comma originated.

In my mind, a list of items ends with the last item. Anything following that is some new concept entirely. In most programming languages, adding the serial comma would be equivalent to making the "and" that follows part of the serial list of items that came before it.

Con: "Those at the ceremony were the commodore, the fleet captain, the donor of the cup, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones."
This example from the 1934 style book of the New York Herald Tribune shows how a comma before "and" can result in a lack of clarity. With the comma, it reads as if Mr. Smith was the donor of the cup, which he was not.
I have taken this particular example from a mental_floss article. There are many other examples where using a serial comma can cause confusion. Also in existence, however, are many instances where not using it may create problems for the reader. In all instances, proper sentence or paragraph structure can help to eliminate any problems that may arise.

One issue that I had for a long time was in understanding how quotations were supposed to work, especially in reference to works of fiction where the is a lot of dialogue between characters. This is 100% related to my programming background.

When programming, quotations are often used to contain specific parameters or data, with any punctuation that occurs inside of them belonging to that data, which punctuation which occurs outside of those quotations is used to designate other things. Most programming languages require a semicolon at the end of every line, for instance. An example from my favorite language, PHP, of the popular programming concept "Hello Word" (which is usually the first output a beginner will make with a given language):

echo 'Hello World';
The semicolon at the end is not output, neither is the word 'echo' or the quotation marks. The end result only returns a black screen with "Hello World" on it (minus the quotations). This ends up distilling a strong sense that whatever comes outside of quotation marks is in some way SEPARATE from what occurs inside of them. To make things more of a hassle, some types of punctuation are meant to occur inside quotation marks, while others must not, while writing.

When you say someone is “square,” do you mean he is antisocial or merely old-fashioned?
Periods and commas go inside, while semicolons do not. That was an actual example from WritersOnlineWorkshops. For a programmer, having that comma, which seems to logically be part of the sentence syntax and structure, occur inside of the quotation marks, is frustrating, to say the least.

An example you may have just noticed about my writing style in the previous paragraph is my gratuitous use of commas. This may not have come from programming. My paragraphs are also typically much shorter than they should or could be. This is an after-effect of so much online chatting. Getting a point across as quickly as possible is of the utmost importance on the internet, which can lead to ideas becoming fragmented and compartmentalized.

I use a few tools to help me write better, such as Grammarly, but there are still many problems with my writing and I'd like to make you aware that I am cognizant of these issues while providing a few excuses as to why I write the way that I do.

Languages are constantly evolving. They are living things. We've only just begun to witness the effect that the internet has on written language. Many words we use on a daily basis did not even exist a few decades ago. Is it safe to assume that, a few decades from now, many of the rules that currently govern writing may become obsolete are modified to fit our new favorite medium, the internet?


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