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Save us, Proper Punctuation!
Or we could just say:
We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers.
This is how I do trololololol ;P
Stalin and the strippers? Awesome band. Their music is a little too hardcore for me, but I suppose that’s okay if you invite them…
Yes, save us from the stupid Oxford comma which introduces as much ambiguity as it solves. For example:
“We invited the communist, Stalin, and JFK”
With the Oxford comma this might mean that we invited a communist named Stalin and JFK or it might mean we invited three people: a communist, Stalin and JFK. Without the Oxford comma there is no ambiguity in this case.
So, all else being equal, it is best to save ink and not add an unnecessary comma which introduces as much ambiguity as it solves.
In that case it would be more proper to say “We invited the communist (Stalin) and JFK.”
Oxford comma is for specifically this case, when you need to separate three distinct items as the second-to-last comes before a coordinating conjunction.
These sentences are the same. The second sentence is still correct, and the same as the one above it. The word AND is also another form of a comma. If you wanted to be absolutely correct, the first sentence is wrong. You’d never add a comma before the word AND. It is incorrect grammar. What the second sentence meant was “we invited the strippers: (SEMI-COLON) JFK and Stalin.”
The point is that with the Oxford comma tends to clarify the ambiguity. It is not incorrect to use it. There is debate as to whether or not it is necessary.
Also, that punctuation is a colon :
A semi-colon is this thingy ;
i don’t get it..
The second one is saying that they invited JFK and Stalin, who are strippers.
Actually no. The first example says they invited strippers of unknown quantity, and in addition invitied jfk and stalin. (I’ll ignore their failure to properly capitalize proper nouns)
The second example is ambiguous. The strippers might be named jfk and stalin, or jfk and stalin might have been invited as well.
The proper way to say you invited the strippers whose names were jfk and stalin… is either exactly like I just said it OR…. by adding the quantifier word “two” in front of the word ‘strippers’.
All that, instead of a comma… TL;DR
Sooo, “we invited two strippers, JFK and Stalin” is less ambiguous?
Work it Stalin, you sexy beast!
Top sentence is clearly meaning three groups:
1) JFK
2) Strippers
3) Stalin
Bottom sentence, per certain variations of English, can have two different meanings:
1) Same as above.
2) We invited strippers, their names are JFK and Stalin.
Effectively, the bottom sentence is the grammatical version of “48÷2(9+3) = ?”.
Heck… posted to the wrong post.
Brackets first. So 9+3 = 12.
Then it’d read “48 ÷ 2 X 12″
Division and multiplication are on the same level of ordering, regardless of any bodmas/bidmas mnemonic…the ‘dm’ can be ‘md’ as far as the rules go. So now we just follow the division first, then the multiplication (same level means you do them in the order they’re shown).
48 ÷ 2 = 24
24 X 12 = 288
Sorted.
Shun the unbeliever!
/readies the burning stake for this “bodmas/bidmas” heretic/
I thought this meme was about grammar!
It is. He’s using the language of Math to illustrate the mistake made in the English language.
Yes, math has grammar. Although we usually call them things like “rules”.
Yeah, I know. I was hoping a bad joke would be a little funny. My bad. >.< haha
I,don’t, get, it, either.
Reposted so many times it’s not even funny
My comment isn’t as funny as this FAIL, but why let humour get in the way of accuracy?
Both those sentences mean the same thing. The second picture needs the caption: “We invited the strippers; JFK and Stalin.”
Does no-one know when to use a semi-colon? It’s not just for winking. Also, let’s have some capitals after a colon and for personal pronouns.
The Oxford comma removes the need for organisation. Clarity without the Oxford comma can be achieved thus: “We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers.”
Lol. It’s not just for winking. What are you, not a teenage girl?
People are stupid. The general population can barely handle using commas, let alone semicolons. I know it may be hard to grasp, but people outside the writing/literary world are, on average, bad at writing. Hell, people within that world aren’t much better at it either.
I practised using the semicolon for about half a month before getting to the stage where I could use it easily. I learnt ‘who/whom’ after that. It’s a case of putting the effort in to learn it.
That’s a shame, considering how much of the general public use text now to communicate.
So if you were introducting someone in a story, you’d say “This is my friend; John”?
I’m pretty sure you’d write “This is my friend, John”.
A comma in a sentence indicates you’d pause slightly there if speaking it out loud… and you’d definitely pause between saying jfk and stalin in the original example. I don’t for the life of me understand why people don’t want a comma there.
The above comment is correct. It seems that you still have some work to do in regards to semi-colon usage. A semi-colon is used when you are connecting two COMPLETE sentences that are linked in some way, often with a conjunctive adverb.
I spent my college years studying very hard; consequently, I missed out on many parties.
The comma is used in several different situations. The one in the picture is called an appositive.
Gosh, no one knows how to use the semi-colon anymore; everyone knows it goes at the end of each statement;
Like:
herp;
derp;
goto line 5;
“This is my friend: John” would be even better.
Cheers from austria.
I agree with you, because ‘John’ is a single object. One use of semi-colons is to introduce lists. It adds clarity in ambiguous situations. Your sentence is not ambiguous, so there is no need for a semi-colon.
“These are my friends, Sam and John” can be written: “These are my friends; Sam and John.”
The confusion in the strippers sentence comes from the plural, inclusive noun preceding the singular, particular nouns.
Now pay attention.
“These are my friends CG, Sam and John” has a slightly different meaning to “These are my friends, CG, Sam and John.” The second indicates that the three friends are all of the speakers friends. In that case you would pause. The first is more like an introduction. It does not have a comma and I wouldn’t pause when speaking. Would you? Try it. We probably come from different places, so our speech may easily vary.
A comma doesn’t always equal a pause. Try “I’m going to the shop to buy apples, oranges, pears, soap and cereal.” I think you’d sound a bit dumb if you paused at every comma. Also, notice how I don’t need a semi-colon for this list.
I am procrastinating as part of exam revision.
I hope the exam revision went well.
Good points, although i disagree with your second-to-last paragraph about the pauses, particularly regarding your “I’m going to the shop to buy apples, oranges, pears, soap and cereal” sentence. I definitely pause at each of those commas (and at the one that should be there between soap and cereal)… it’s not necessarily a full long pause, but the amount of time between saying each of those words is clearly longer than the amount of time between saying the words in the first part of the sentence.
Actually you would use a colon there not a semi-colon.
Or you would just say “This is my friend John,” like a normal person.
“Does no-one know when to use a semi-colon?”
Apparently not, Mr. Zwiebel, but maybe theoatmeal can help with that: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
I know how to use a semi-colon and that, sir, is not how you use it.
No, that is incorrect. You use a semi-colon to connect two complete sentences.
Like: “I love dictator strippers; Stalin is the bomb.”
Using or not using the Oxford comma are both right, it’s just that if you don’t use it, the sentence can mean two different things. Using a semi-colon in this example is always wrong.
You’re thinking of a colon.
^This
Nice touch that you showed Kennedy leaning to reflect his back pain from Addison’s disease, but you missed Stalin’s yellow eyeballs.
The second means what the first one proclaims to mean and that is also how I read it.
To get the misinterpretation depicted in the 2nd picture you’d need a semi colon. (I think… )
“we invited the strippers; JFK and Stalin.”
I think…
Oxford commas really annoy me and I never use them. That annoyance was instilled by a very strict but charismatic English Lit teacher in school.
Idd it should be a semi-colon…
Oxford Comma forever!
Oxford comma is lame, that’s why nobody uses it.
Are you kidding me? Most of the Internet population doesn’t know this difference between your and you’re or their, there, and they’re.
This is really asking too much
Your right!
Their awl write!
Its just like that.
Well, the bottom case could rather be written using a colon, amirit?
Can everyone get over the Oxford comma fight? Its use or nonuse is entirely a question of style; neither is “correct” or incorrect. Both can be contrived to create ambiguities (for example, the sentence “I want to thank my father, the Pope, and God” gives rise to a much more scandalous second interpretation), which are rare, generally obvious in their intended meaning from context, and avoidable by varying list order. The correct choice is to look up the style guide for whoever you’re writing for, our if you’re writing personally pick one and be consistent.
I can’t believe no one has noticed that the above illustration doesn’t describe the Oxford comma at all …
I love Vampire Weekend.
The second picture is incorrect. If one wanted to state they were inviting two named strippers, there would be no need for a comma: “We invited the strippers JFK and Stalin”. Failblog is failing hard, presently.
Yup. You would have the comma if you had more to say following their names, but in order to be clear you can’t rely on the comma alone. Depending on what is said, either a semicolon or a quantifying word (such as “the two strippers”) in order to rule out confusion.
On a side note, is it just me or does anybody else suspect this was only submitted so the auto-moderation system would get overloaded?
Good post, Love it. Keep it up. I appreciate it.
Bad post, Hate it. Knock it off. Everyone else will appreciate it.
Repetitive post. Hate it. Name links to spam. I don’t appreciate it.
The US uses too many commas. Sometimes it’s like reading 18th Century English prose.
in the top sentence, jfk could be the name for the stripping group.
Exactly. The only unambiguous writing of who was in invited would be to say “We invited the strippers and jfk and stalin.”
Tell me how many people I invited with both of these sentences:
“I invited my father, the mayor, and his new wife” and
“I invited my father, the mayor and his new wife.”
(You would have to know if the mayor was my father, or a different person, to know if I had invited my father, the mayor, or both my father and the mayor.)
Isn’t it better to use a ” : ” in the second case?
We invited the strippers: jfk and stalin.
It’s redundant. Both a colon and a comma would work there. However, a colon would be considered “overkill” in this sort of situation.
In German there’s never a comma before “and” (“und”) and still there’s no confusion. (I always assumed it works the same in English, heh. Never had punctuation lessons.) If it’s a list, you comma between the words, except before the “and”. If several entities are meant, you just make NO comma. “The strippers JFK and Stalin”. Since “strippers” is plural, the extension of that attribute until Stalin is clear. If it was “stripper”, Stalin wouldn’t be a stripper. If there’s a third entity who is not in the cloth-shedding business, it might get confusing and I’m not sure how to best clarify the situation, I guess “the strippers, JFK and Stalin and the hooker Adolf”.
I helped my uncle Jack, off the horse.
I helped my uncle jack off the horse.
The first sentence doesn’t make sense. The second one is gross, but it does make sense.
I think you meant to say:
“I helped my uncle, Jack, off the horse.”
I agree with the person who said “can no-one get the oxford comma right?” He was indeed correct as they’re both matters of style and not syntax. The latter part is not correct, primarily because of that fact, and the assertion made would only be accurate if the comma in the sentence were a colon, not a comma.
“The strippers: JFK and Stalin.”
Other than that, it’s a matter of style, not syntactic correctness.
I read them both normally, because the Oxford Comma is a load of balls.
CG wrote :
“So if you were introducting someone in a story, you’d say “This is my friend; John”?
I’m pretty sure you’d write “This is my friend, John”.”
Both of those statements are incorrect, assuming you are introducing your friend named John. In the first statement, “John” is an incomplete clause and does not belong on either side of a semicolon by itself.
In the second statement, the comma indicates that you are introducing an unnamed friend to a person named John.
On another note, grammar and mathematics are NOT comparable. Grammar has special cases, but math has steadfast rules.
Thankyou!
I don’t get it…? I mean, I get what a missing comma does (and the intention of the joke) but wtf is an “Oxford comma”? I’ve never heard of it before. How is it different from a regular comma?
I would have punctuated the original sentence the same way as shown but by using two regular commas and not an “Oxford comma.”
Also, shouldn’t “jfk” and “stalin” be capitalized?
I don’t know the technicalities of proper grammar; I just use proper punctuation out of habit, not out of understanding. Similar to how people learn their first language.
The oxford comma presents no “correct” form, the idea of it exists to refute incorrect comma usage. It’s not so much about what the rule is but more about what it shows as wrong.
The second sentence is wrong because of a two-fold reason: If the writer chose to list the nouns in that order, the oxford comma is necessary to confirm the meaning of the first sentence.
What this means is that the whole oxford comma debate is useless because it’s both a non-binding convention and both a rule, and that the meaning (provided in the first example) is necessary to figure out what needs an oxford comma and what doesn’t.
Lots of people will just say “Oh, its a style choice, it could have been written differently” but the problem is that it’s already been written, there is no “could have been” because it’s already after the fact. This is a rare case in writing where intention comes before grammar to prove correctness.
repost… would rather see guys stripping anyday (well, not those guys).
THANK YOU. This is why the comma is necessary.
The illustrator of this doesn’t seem to know that male strippers exist.
This is completely wrong… the second case is implying a : was used instead of a comma.
the strippers: JFK and Stalin.
Complete fail.
I still think it is strange. My native language is German and you don’t write a comma there in German, because in an enumeration the “,” are short for “and”. So a “,” followed by an “and” would be redundant.
…That doesn’t look like JFK at all.