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Jan Freeman@janfreeman.bsky.social |
Thanks for reminding me of the one I saw in yesterday's NYT: "She was taken by ambulance to the plane with her husband, a nurse and a paramedic." On first pass I read this to mean her husband was a nurse and paramedic. (Which is why we shouldn't be dogmatic about using the Oxford comma.)
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Colleen Barry
@copycurmudgeon.bsky.social
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Sure, but adding a comma after “nurse” would only clarify that the husband wasn’t a paramedic, it would still be ambiguous as to whether he was a nurse. Like most sentences whose meaning is unclear without a serial comma, it would be better to recast this.
1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Joe Rybicki
@joerybicki.com
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No, see, that’s exactly why we SHOULD be dogmatic! If everyone used the serial comma as the good lord intended, that sentence wouldn’t be ambiguous at all; there’d be no question the husband IS both nurse and paramedic. (For the avoidance of doubt: I’m just being goofy; rewording is the way to go.)
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes