Everyone knows that The New Yorker is famously fuddy-duddy for its use of “close” punctuation. The copy editor from whom I inherited the comma shaker was herself not a fan of our style on commas; hence her painstaking creation of this one-of-a-kind item—a cannister (we spell it with two “n”s) about the size of a giant can of grated cheese, wrapped in brown paper flecked with hand-drawn commas, and topped with a perforated blue lid. The joke, of course, is that we are overliberal in our use of commas and ought to be more judicious.
Nobody is really arguing about the serial comma. We like it because it prevents ambiguity." Then she goes into a convoluted example involving a "my boss, her nephew and my acupuncturist" (the pronouns are important here, but you'll have to read Norris' post to find out why." She concludes:
... the point is that when you restrict the use of the serial comma solely to those instances where a genuine ambiguity exists, then every time you come to a series you have to stop and think. By adopting the serial comma, we have more energy to devote to sprinkling in commas elsewhere.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/in-defense-of-commas.html#ixzz1ryDKtCQa
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/in-defense-of-commas.html#ixzz1ryDBlf4v
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/in-defense-of-commas.html#ixzz1ryCuiiGt
keeper of the comma shaker here at The New Yorker
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/in-defense-of-commas.html#ixzz1ryC6QW12
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/in-defense-of-commas.html#ixzz1ryC6QW12
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