University commas
« previous post | next post »
The current xkcd comic:
Mouseover title: "The distinctive 'UCLA comma' and 'Michigan comma' are a long string of commas at the start and end of the sentence respectively."
I guess Penn, Brown, Berkeley, CalTech, …, should be grateful for being left out.
I'll spare you our past posts on the Oxford comma, except this one.
Laura Morland said,
October 8, 2024 @ 7:40 am
I laughed out loud, because for years now – being married to a strict adhérent of the Oxford comma – my mathématician husband, John Rhodes (S.B. & Ph.D. MIT), jokes that he uses the "MIT comma."
And whaddaya know, xkcd got the placement exactly right. Uncanny!
AntC said,
October 8, 2024 @ 7:56 am
The newly but grudgingly conceded German 'idiot apostrophe'.
Jenny Chu said,
October 8, 2024 @ 11:14 am
I discovered when publishing my book with a British publisher that the bitterest fights with my editor were always about what I perceived as necessary and she perceived as excess commas.
As a Harvard alum myself, I am willing to concede that the optional – and probably superfluous, in the opinions of some British (no doubt Oxford or Cambridge graduates) – comma after "Please" does, indeed, deserve the moniker "Harvard comma".
Jenny Chu said,
October 8, 2024 @ 11:16 am
Also, as a Harvard alum, I am absolutely ready to aver that the only comma in the bunch that is irrefutably wrong is the Yale comma. The Princeton comma comes close but we more readily indulge their little fancies.
Stephen Goranson said,
October 8, 2024 @ 1:16 pm
Have their own comma, or commas?
Chris Button said,
October 8, 2024 @ 2:02 pm
@ Jenny Chu
I've always found it ironic that the "Oxford comma" is more likely to find its biggest advocates in North America. I suppose its misnomer is on the level of foodstuffs like ""english" muffins and "cornish" hens.
David Morris said,
October 8, 2024 @ 2:30 pm
To me, the 'Harvard comma'. suggests a pause and an extra amount of pleading (or pleasing):
Please close the door.
Please, close the door.
Kakurady said,
October 8, 2024 @ 7:17 pm
Several programming languages allow a comma after the last item in a list, for example
[cat, hat, mat,]
This is for the benefit of tools that track code changes (called a "diff"), which often highlight changes on a line-by-line basis.
If a comma is not allowed at the end of a list, when each item is listed on its own line, for example
[
cat,
hat,
mat
]
Adding an item to the end of the list will result in the addition of a comma after the previously last item:
[
cat,
hat,
mat,
sat
]
In this case, the line with the third item is recorded as changed, even if no functionality change has taken place. This complicates analyzing development history of the software.
Roscoe said,
October 8, 2024 @ 7:40 pm
The Columbia comma seems appropriately New York-ish: “Please buy apples, Mac….”
Jenny Chu said,
October 8, 2024 @ 8:13 pm
@Chris Button – it's not the Oxford comma specifically, but commas in general. AmEn writers use them far more liberally than BrEn writers. British editors are forever removing what they find to be superfluous commas in American works, and American editors are forever adding what they believe to be missing commas in British writing.
Garrett Wollman said,
October 8, 2024 @ 8:58 pm
@Jenny Chu: long ago, Mark Brader hypothesized a "great British punctuation shortage" in the 1950s as being responsible for the loss of many previously mandatory hyphens. Perhaps that's what got their commas as well.
ktschwarz said,
October 8, 2024 @ 11:15 pm
Apparently Randall Munroe doesn't know that "Harvard comma" is already established as a synonym for "Oxford comma".
Chris Button: I've always found it ironic that the "Oxford comma" is more likely to find its biggest advocates in North America. — Indeed, it really should be called the Chicago comma; Chicago must be responsible for far more of them than Oxford, since CMOS is used by a lot of publishers.
Chris Button said,
October 9, 2024 @ 5:52 am
@ Jenny Chu
True. Take The New Yorker versus The Economist.
British English also doesn't distinguish "which" and "that" as assiduously as American English.
@ ktschwarz
Also true. I wonder where the "Oxford comma" name actually comes from? I think in Britain, it just goes by the name "serial comma".
Mark Liberman said,
October 9, 2024 @ 8:32 am
@Chris Button: I wonder where the "Oxford comma" name actually comes from? I think in Britain, it just goes by the name "serial comma".
According to Wikipedia,
The Oxford comma is most often attributed to Horace Hart, the printer and controller of the Oxford University Press from 1893 to 1915. Hart wrote the eponymous Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers in 1905 as a style guide for the employees working at the press. The guide called for the use of the serial comma, but the punctuation mark had no distinct name until 1978, when Peter Sutcliffe referred to the Oxford comma as such in his historical account of the Oxford University Press.
Sutcliffe, however, attributed the Oxford comma not to Horace Hart but to F. Howard Collins, who mentioned it in his 1905 book, Author & Printer: A Guide for Authors, Editors, Printers, Correctors of the Press, Compositors, and Typists.
C Baker said,
October 9, 2024 @ 11:04 am
> I suppose its misnomer is on the level of foodstuffs like ""english" muffins and "cornish" hens.
Is "English muffin" really a misnomer? Wikipedia says they're often or usually referred to simply as "muffins" in the UK, which… well, it suggests to me that for Americans to call them "english" isn't too strange.
Chris Button said,
October 9, 2024 @ 12:39 pm
Surely a crumpet is the true heir to the original English muffin? Wasn't the "english muffin" then brought to Britain by purveyors such as McDonald's as the illegitimate heir?
Kate Bunting said,
October 11, 2024 @ 4:05 am
No – 'English' muffins are a type of bread, while crumpets are made from pancake batter.
Chris Button said,
October 11, 2024 @ 7:02 am
The history section under "muffin" in Wikipedia suggests substantial confusion though.
I note this quote: In the Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson states that "[t]here has always been some confusion between muffins, crumpets, and pikelets, both in recipes and in name."
This sounds more like a Rugby Football (as opposed to Association Football–i.e. "soccer") vs American/Canadian Football type thing with lots of confusion all round. Not to mention Gaelic Football and Australian Rules Football.
Peter Erwin said,
October 11, 2024 @ 2:07 pm
In the TV series "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (and possibly in one of the books it's based on), there's a brief bit where a character is excited about teaching the children grammar, including "everything from the Oxford comma to the Wesleyan semicolon."
(The author of the books, "Lemony Snicket" [Daniel Handler], was a graduate of Wesleyan University.)
Peter Taylor said,
October 13, 2024 @ 2:13 am
@Jenny Chu, as a Cambridge graduate, I struggle to see how anyone could justify the maliciously attributed "Cambridge comma".
Laura Morland said,
November 16, 2024 @ 7:20 pm
Peter Taylor, I agree that this appellation could justifiably be called "malicious."
I would postulate that the erroneously-attributed "Cambridge comma" is actually an ellipsis, posing as a comma.
Even a month later, the "MIT comma" still cracks me up. My MIT-educated husband is a genius in math, but "nul" in grammar. In conversation, he often introduces a new topic by saying "Comma." (To which I often riposte, "Period!")
Proof positive that xkcd's graphic is correct – the MIT comma does indeed come at the end of a sentence.