Misuse of the serial comma doesn't exactly get my Irish up, but never you fear, John Rosenberg is on the case:
O.K., I'm sure some of you are asking, what does the serial comma have to do with discrimination? I could be cute and say it reflects discriminating taste, but I won't. I could say that the anarchy of the NYT's punctuation reveals what happens when "rules" are so flexible they aren't rules at all, or if they are they are too confusing to apply consistently, and that, though a bit overblown, would be getting closer to what one's attitude toward the serial comma reveals about other (some would say more important) issues.
Many, perhaps most, critics of rules (or "strict rules," if you prefer) misunderstand them. They see them as the command of Orthodoxy, or at least Authority, and hence believe that freedom demands defiance. They see them as Absolutes, and hence out of time and place in our modern (or, worse, postmodern) pragmatic, relativistic culture. What these critics of rules (and, in fact, of formalism in general) miss is the fact that one of the strongest rationales for having them is, perhaps ironically, purely pragmatic and instrumental: they increase efficiency.
Using the serial comma can never cause confusion. Omitting it, as we have seen, often can. Thus if your "rule" is to omit it, you have to stop and consider whether every series you write is clear. The serial comma rule takes that decision off the table; if you use it for every series, you don't have to consider the clarity question on every one of them. Grammatical rules, in short, are very much like principles: the stronger they are, the more pauses and potential confusions they take off the table.
Grammatical rules which are currently out of favor in our educational system, not least for the reason that teachers can't be bothered to learn them. When I hear of stories like this one - anecdotal, but amusing - I have to wonder if those who oppose the "narrow" teaching of such rules are in favor of plenty of confusion in communication.
Posted by kswygert at February 6, 2005 05:58 PM