Transcription:

With the Oxford comma:

we invited the strippers, jfk, and stalin.

[A picture showing a cartoon image of 4 people. JFK, Stalin, and 2 strippers.]

Without the Oxford comma:

we invited the strippers, jfk and stalin.

[A picture showing a cartoon image of 2 people. JFK and Stalin, both dressed in the same stripper outfits as the strippers in the above image.]

  • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    Rearranging can work for some contexts, but not for all. The most straightforward example would be if you were transcribing something spoken by someone else. You could try to blame them for speaking “wrong”, but that’s beside the point. They said what they said, and you have to write it down.

    Do you put the Oxford comma in or not?

    For me, the most important factor in answering that question is the fact that in speech, it’s typical that there will be more of a pause between “stalin” and “and” in a list of 3 than there would be in a list of just 2. So there’s no comma in lists of just 2, but there is a comma, including the Oxford comma, in lists of 3 or more.

    At its core, written language is a way of representing spoken language. There are many cases in which this in not a one-to-one—a choice of em dash, brackets, or commas for parenthetical might have very little (if any) difference in how it is pronounced in the spoken word, for example—but hopefully we can all agree that there is at least a rough correlation there. And when “A B and C” has a similar pause between “B” and “and” as it has between “A” and “B”, it makes more sense to write “A, B, and C” than “A, B and C”.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      4·
      5 months ago

      not really relevant. there are style guides for transcriptions with altogether different considerations than for original writing.

      when precision is important, it should never be “Oxford comma or not,” it should be “does this accurately reflect meaning or not.”

      if you’re writing, that usually means rearranging words. if you’re transcribing, parentheticals or additional notes should be included if there is risk of misunderstanding. either way, if you are seeking precision, the overall meaning of a sentence should never come down to a single stroke of a pen.

      additional pettiness that doesn’t matter

      your statement “at its core, written language is a way of representing spoken language” is not true. to a degree, it is a valid understanding of how written language came to be, but does not aptly describe the relationship between written and spoken language at all.

      from wikipedia:

      [W]ritten language is not merely spoken or signed language written down, though it can approximate that. Instead, it is a separate system with its own norms, structures, and stylistic conventions, and it often evolves differently than its corresponding spoken or signed language.