Thinkstock

The Best Shots Fired in the Oxford Comma Wars

January 22, 2013

Thinkstock

The Oxford comma, so-called because the Oxford University Press style guidelines require it, is the comma before the conjunction at the end of a list. If your preferred style is to omit the second comma in "red, white, and blue," you are aligned with the anti-Oxford comma faction. The pro-Oxford comma faction is more vocal and numerous in the US, while in the UK, anti-Oxford comma reigns. (Oxford University is an outsider, style-wise, in its own land.) In the US, book and magazine publishers are generally pro, while newspapers are anti, but both styles can be found in both media.

The two main rationales for choosing one style over the other are clarity and economy. Each side has invoked both rationales in its favor. Here are some quotes that have served as shots exchanged in the Oxford comma wars.

Pro: "She took a photograph of her parents, the president, and the vice president."

This example from the Chicago Manual of Style shows how the comma is necessary for clarity. Without it, she is taking a picture of two people, her mother and father, who are the president and vice president. With it, she is taking a picture of four people.

Con: "Those at the ceremony were the commodore, the fleet captain, the donor of the cup, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones."

This example from the 1934 style book of the New York Herald Tribune shows how a comma before "and" can result in a lack of clarity. With the comma, it reads as if Mr. Smith was the donor of the cup, which he was not.

Pro: "Zinovieff shot over five hundred of the bourgeoisie at a stroke—nobles, professors, officers, journalists, men and women."

George Ives, the author of a 1921 guide to the usage style of the Atlantic Monthly Press, gives this example to show how making the comma before "and" standard practice is more economical. This way, the reader will know for sure that if it's missing, there's a good reason. Here the reading is that there were both men and women among the nobles, professors, officers, and journalists. Without the expectation of the Oxford comma, the reader has to work harder to figure out that men and women aren't two additional groups on the list.

Con: "There are certain places where for the sake of clarity and good form the presence of a comma is obligatory, but on the other hand a too liberal use of this form of punctuation tends to slow up the pace of the reading matter and to create confusion and hesitancy in the mind of the reader."

The 1937 New York Times style guide put economy on the side of the no comma rule. Use when necessary—otherwise, it's just clutter to slow you down.

Pro: "...use the comma between all members of a series, including the last two, on the commonsense ground that to do so will preclude ambiguities and annoyances at negligible cost."

Wilson Follett, in his 1966 Modern American Usage, advocates for the comma on the grounds that it can't really hurt.

Con: "All those commas make the flag seem rained on. They give it a furled look. Leave them out, and Old Glory is flung to the breeze, as it should be."

This complaint was addressed to Harold Ross, the founding editor of the New Yorker, by James Thurber, who preferred "the red white and blue" to "the red, white, and blue." Ross, a notorious defender of the serial comma, was impressed by Thurber's argument and responded, "write a piece about it, and I'll punctuate the flag any way you want it—in that one piece."

Pro: "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God"

A probably apocryphal book dedication, this example has been a favorite of pro-Oxford comma language blogs for a while. Without the comma before "and," you get a rather intriguing set of parents.

Con: "The English are rather more careful than we are, and commonly put a comma after the next-to-last member of a series, but otherwise are not too precise to offend a red-blooded American."

H.L. Mencken, who did not use the serial comma himself, implies, in this quote tucked into a supplement to The American Language, that there is something prissy, pedantic, and altogether un-American about the extra comma.

?: "By train, plane and sedan chair, Peter Ustinov retraces a journey made by Mark Twain a century ago. The highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector."

Languagehat dug this gem out of a comment thread on the serial comma. It's from a TV listing in The Times. It supports the use of the Oxford comma, but only because it keeps Mandela from being a dildo collector. However, even the Oxford comma can't keep him from being an 800-year-old demigod. There's only so much a comma can do.

language

iStock

arrow

Words

15 Obscure Words For Everyday Feelings And Emotions

BY Paul Anthony Jones

July 6, 2017

iStock

Given that it runs to more than a quarter of a million words, there’s a good chance that the English language will probably have the word you’re looking for. But when it comes to finding words for or else describing otherwise indescribable feelings and emotions, much is made of the English language’s shortcomings: We either have to turn to foreign languages to describe situations like coming up with a perfect comeback when the moment has passed (esprit de l’escalier—thank you French), or else use resources like the brilliant, but sadly entirely fictitious, Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows or Meaning of Liff.

But so vast is the English language that words for feelings and emotions, and to describe the human condition, have actually found their way into the dictionary. So there’s no need to call that comeback esprit de l’escalier, because the word afterwit has been in use in English since the late 16th century. And here are 15 more obscure English words to describe feelings that are otherwise indescribable.

1. CROOCHIE-PROOCHLES

This superb Scots dialect word is croochie-proochles—the feeling of discomfort or fidgetiness that comes from sitting in a cramped position (like, say, on an airplane).

2. NIKHEDONIA

You’re playing a game, and you suddenly realize that you’ve got it in the bag. Or you’re watching your favorite team play and, after a close-fought match, you see that they’re surely going to win. That’s nikhedonia—the feeling of excitement or elation that comes from anticipating success.

3. ALYSM

Alysm is the feeling of restlessness or frustrated boredom that comes from being unwell. When you’re desperate to get on with your day but you’re so under the weather that you can’t bring yourself to get out of bed? That’s alysm.

4. SHIVVINESS

A shive is a tiny splinter or fragment of something, or else a loose thread sticking out of a piece of fabric. And derived from that, shivviness is an old Yorkshire dialect word for the feeling of discomfort that comes from wearing new underwear—a word that surely needs to be more widely known.

5. DÉJÀ-VISITÉ

Yes, strictly speaking this isn’t an English word, but like the more familiar déjà-vu before it, we have nevertheless had the foresight to borrow déjà-visité from French and add it to our dictionaries—it’s just not used as often as its more familiar cousin. It describes the peculiar sensation of knowing your way around somewhere you’ve never been before.

6. PRESQUE-VU

One more term we’ve borrowed from French is presque-vu. It literally means “almost seen,” and refers to that sensation of forgetting or not being able to remember something, but feeling that you could remember it any minute.

7. GWENDERS

That tingling feeling you get in your fingers when they’re cold? That’s gwenders.

8. MISSLIENESS

The Scots dialect word missilieness means “the feeling of solitariness that comes from missing something or someone you love.”

9. EUNEIROPHRENIA and 10. MALNEIROPHRENIA

Oneiros was the Greek word for a dream, and derived from that the English language has adopted a handful of obscure terms like oneirocriticism (the interpretation of dreams), oneirodynia (a night’s sleep disturbed by nightmares), and this pair. Euneirophrenia is the feeling of contentment that comes from waking up from a pleasant dream, while malneirophrenia is the feeling of unease or unhappiness that comes from waking up from a nightmare.

11. LONESOME-FRET

That feeling of restlessness or unease that comes from being on your own too long is lonesome-fret, an 18th century dialect word defined as “ennui from lonesomeness” by the English Dialect Dictionary.

12. FAT-SORROW

“Sorrow alleviated by riches”—or, put another way, sadness alleviated by material things—is fat-sorrow. It’s a term best remembered from the old adage that “fat sorrow is better than lean sorrow.”

13. HORROR VACUI

The dislike some people have of leaving an empty space anywhere—like on a wall or in furnishing a room—is called horror vacui, a Latin term originally adopted into English in the mid-19th century to refer to the tendency of some artists to fill every square inch of their paintings or artworks with detail.

14. CRAPULENCE

When the word hangover just won’t do it justice, there’s crapulence. As the OED defines it, crapulence is a feeling of “sickness or indisposition resulting from excess in drinking or eating.”

15. HUCKMUCK

According to the English Dialect Dictionary, the confusion that comes from things not being in their right place—like when you’ve moved everything around while you’re cleaning your house—is called huckmuck.

language Lists

iStock

arrow

language

12 Fantastic Foreign Phrases We Should All Be Using

BY Nicolas Rivero

July 6, 2017

iStock

The English language is bursting with quirky idioms, from the people who have been waiting for a restroom for so long that their eyeballs are floating, to the moments when we escape a dicey situation by the skin of our teeth (as coined by Job in the King James Bible). But there’s always room for a little more variety in any lexicon.

Whether young, old, tall, short, eating a cable, or living like a maggot in bacon, you can enrich your linguistic palette with these fun phrases borrowed from other languages, courtesy of OxEssays.