I know my grammar sucks. I’ve read your mail. I never really paid attention when they were teaching grammar. I didn’t take to it naturally. So, my grammar, such that it is, is mainly learned through osmosis. I read an incredible amount of grammatically correct English, and I pick up on how to write correctly as a result. I still suck.
That’s why I get aggravated when they start changing rules on punctuation. I’m actually fairly decent at punctuation. I was taught to add two spaces after a period and one space after a comma. Then they changed it to one space after a period. I’m sorry, but I’m defiant.
The latest change is even more annoying.
The comma
As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’:
They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.
I’m sorry, but I’m not doing that. It doesn’t read correctly. There’s a reason that you don’t place a comma between bacon and eggs, and it’s the same reason that you do put a comma between things of equal weight that are not conjoined. The lack of a comma contains information. It tells you that the bacon and the eggs go together to create one unit along the string of units being listed. Why add a comma after ‘a’ if you’re not going to add one after ‘b’? It’s confusing.
Add it to the list of things that are annoying me.
