In my travels, both in person and electronic, I’ve made quite a few friends for whom English is their first language but not the brand of English we speak in the United States. It’s always a joy to get into a language discussion with someone from the UK and someone from Australia, though I wouldn’t recommend doing so at the same time unless copious amounts of alcohol are readily available.
I write a bit and in working with my friend and editor (one of those UK English speakers) I’m learning rather a lot about how malleable the “immutable” laws of punctuation I learned in school really are.
Hence, this giggler from Michael Quinion’s “World Wide Words”
Perhaps the best argument for the serial comma is that apocryphal book dedication: “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God”.
Hey, it made me laugh right out loud.
Learn more about the Oxford/Harvard comma.
“To my parents, Ayn Rand and God”.
That made me laugh so much, and I will use that sometime, if I ever again need to defend my love for the serial comma.