If you’re really, seriously worried that “I had eggs, toast and orange juice for breakfast” will somehow be misread as “I had the following for breakfast: (1) eggs, (2) toast and orange juice mixed together,” instead of “I had the following for breakfast: (1) eggs, (2) toast, and (3) orange juice,” then I have to say I don’t know why you’re stopping there. Why not worry about the fact that “I had eggs, toast, and orange juice for breakfast” might possibly be misread as: “I had the following for breakfast: juice made out of (1) eggs, (2) toast, and (3) oranges”? That’s just as justifiable a reading based on the syntax. But then the Oxford comma doesn’t fix that possible misreading. You might say, “But every competent reader of the language understands in context that ‘eggs’ is hardly ever intended to modify ‘juice’!” Of course they do. And every competent reader of the language also understands in context that you didn’t soak your toast in your orange juice, either. Even if you didn’t comma that point through their skull.

Abolish the police.

N.B.: commas in English mostly serve a rhetorical or poetic function, not a syntactic function. They exist, mainly, to modify the scansion of a sentence not, usually, to modify the grammatical role of phrases within it. That’s OK: languages both written and spoken have many devices for structuring the syntax other than commas. The most brilliant and ordinary writers of the ancient world got along fine for centuries without any commas at all (or semicolons, or periods, or indeed even any spaces between words). Somehow literate civilization kept on keeping on. If you’re freaking out the Oxford comma or whether or not someone is going to be confused about your meaning when you write “To my parents, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger,” then you are probably worrying about the wrong thing.

http://ift.tt/1ewTdl0 Abolish the police.

Abolish the police.

Abolish the police.

“Stop assaulting my fists with your chest!” Abolish the police.

Abolish the e.

What I would really prefer as a personal option for the new “custom” gender widget is, “If I haven’t told you, it isn’t any of your business.”

Yup, this.