It's Sunday

I recall some while ago that there was a general consensus among some fellow bloggers that weekend posts were less read than weekday ones.   On that basis I shall do my Oxford Comma post today.  Frances wrote a post entitled The Essential Colon recently.  Frances likes colons and semi-colons.  So do I.  Flippantly I commented "Let's eat Grandma. Let's eat, Grandma. Punctuation can save lives. I love colons and semi-colons. I use the Oxford [I actually said 'Cambridge comma' silly billy that I am], though, so perhaps, to some, I'm not a purist."  Actually my brother CJ (aka Scriptor Senex wrote a piece on the Oxford Comma entitled, with his usual pithy directness 'The Oxford Comma' in August last year.

To be honest I don't have any strong views on the Oxford Comma (and as I get older on fewer and fewer other things either).  However, whilst I may not use it when there is no particular need for it I do use it when I feel that there is.

The Oxford Comma' is an optional comma before the word 'and' at the end of a list: I like coffee, chocolate, and budgerigars.  Actually I'm not that fond of budgerigars but I thought it might make you sit up and take a bit more notice.  I probably wouldn't use a comma between 'chocolate' and 'and' in that sentence.

However if I were to write I like coffee and chocolate, bread and butter, and cheese and wine.  Then I would always use a comma between between the penultimate pairing and the 'and' before the last pairing.  That is an Oxford Comma.

Does anyone really care?  I would hazard a guess that if you were to ask all the children under 15 that you know very few, if any, of them would have the slightest idea how to use a colon or a semi-colon and that 99.99(rec)% of the English speaking population wouldn't know what an Oxford Comma is.

I have to face things though: I even split infinitives and end sentences with prepositions sometimes these days.  I don't put commas in addresses on envelopes.  And I sometimes start sentences with prepositions.  All is lost.  Woe is me. 

A Present and a Word I Don't Like

I've rather given up on the subject of grammar and punctuation recently.  No one takes any notice anyway.  However when I was up in Northland one of Pauline's friends, Chris, (whom I've known since I first went to Northland to visit Pauline some years ago) gave me a present when we met at the Waipu Easter Carnival.

The present was a 1936 publication: ABC of English Usage.  It's fascinating.  The first word I looked up was pleonasm which is one of my favourite grammar terms.  It is there.

The second word I looked up was one of my pet dislikes at the moment because it has suddenly come into vogue in the UK and NZ and is used frequently on the radio and television news.  It's even coming into  everyday conversation amongst the literati.  That word is eventuate.  Its pretentiousness grates with me because it always seems to me that it is being used to replace the perfectly good word 'happen'.

In New Zealand the term 'shit happens' is a very common one.  Everyone knows what it means.  I wouldn't mind betting that if you asked a cross section of the population what 'shit eventuates' means they wouldn't have a clue.  So why be so showy?  If a bureaucrat used it s/he would be slated for a lack of plain English.

Whilst on the subject of the Waipu Carnival one of my few photos (the weather was not very pleasant) was to show that Scots get everywhere:

It's good to have a little rant now and again.  Especially when one has just had yet another Very Good Day.