4.19.2012

Not until they pry it from my cold, dead key

Don't kill the Oxford comma! - Grammar - Salon.com

Grammar lovers today were saddened, shocked, and mightily displeased at the news that the P.R. department of the University of Oxford has decided to drop the comma for which it is so justly famed.…

The Associated Press stylebook has for a very long time eschewed this so-called Oxford comma (it's the comma before the "and" in a series, as in "red, white, and blue" it's that comma right there after "white). But the Chicago Tribune uses the comma, or at least did use it last time looked (which was, now, quite a while ago). I asked a friend who was an editor at the Trib about that, about how they dealt with Associated Press copy, which did not have the comma referenced here (see above re: stylebook) and he said, well, we have an editor whose whole job is putting it back in. 

No comments: