In “Give Your English the Winning Edge”, you write:
“Many people discover to their dismay that their many years of formal study of English has not given them the proficiency level demanded by the job market, by the various professions, or by higher academic studies.”
Although “many years of study” has a sense of singularity, it is still undeniably a plural subject and therefore demands “have”.
And, in a list of attributes, should not there be a comma after each, except the second last?
In the same vein,
“In this exciting new volume, the National Book Award-winning author of English Plain and Simple unravels the various mechanisms and tools of English for combining words and ideas into clear, logical, and engaging writing.”
There is a comma after the second-last adjective. In my brief squiz at the excerpt from GYETWE, I noted that you do this all the time. Has some authority changed convention?
Yes, Max, I admit that I use the serial comma all the time as a matter of stylistic choice. I just happened to have imbibed the serial-comma tradition from Strunk and White’s
The Elements of Style and the
Chicago Manual of Style, both of which use the American English standard, and also from the decidedly British
Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler. However, during my early days as a campus journalist and later as a reporter for a daily newspaper, I would routinely knock off my serial commas because the newspaper I was working with just happened to have adopted the preference of the major American newspapers and news bureaus, particularly
The New York Times and the Associated Press. If I didn’t knock off those serial commas myself, my editors would do so anyway and sullenly admonish me not to foist my personal preference on them despite the house rule against it.
No, the convention on whether or not to use the serial comma has not changed at all. I am aware that the no-serial-comma tradition remains a widespread stylistic practice in the United Kingdom as well as in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, particularly in their mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. Knowing that you are based in Australia, I therefore don't take it against you when you complain against my use of the serial comma. But please understand that I just want to be consistent after making a personal choice based on my personal experience with the problems of punctuation over the years.
Of course, the usefulness of the serial comma might not be readily apparent and appreciated when the items in a sentence with a serial list consist only of a single word or two, as in the following sentences:
“She bought a lot of apples,
oranges and pears.”
“For the role of Hamlet, the possible choices are Fred Smith, Ted Owen,
Jim Harris and George Brown."
But see what happens when the items in the list consist of long phrases with more than four or five words:
“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food,
freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”
Now, without using the serial comma to do its punctuation job, try to figure out where each enumerative item ends and begins in the phrase “freshwater and marine fish of various kinds and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”
You might have ultimately figured it out, of course, but see how clear and unequivocal the second and final items would have been had we deployed a serial comma between “various kinds” and “aquarium equipment,” as follows:
“The major businesses in the domestic pet services industry are traditional veterinary services, fancy pet grooming and makeover shops, a wide assortment of animal and bird food,
freshwater and marine fish of various kinds, and aquarium equipment and supplies for industrial and home use.”
I therefore think it’s best to use a serial comma by default in such situations regardless of how long the phrase for each item is in the enumerative sequence. This way, we can avoid making unilateral decisions on whether or not to use a comma in a way that could just confuse readers and violate their sense of rhythm and balance.
The example I have just discussed shows what to me is the most grammatically important function of the serial comma, but there are several others for which
Wikipedia gives several very interesting—and sometimes hilarious—examples.
Mignon Fogarty of the website “Grammar Girl” has also written a very lucid and balanced explanation of the pros and cons of using the serial comma. I suggest you check out both sites now—simply click the link that I have provided above for each of them—if you still have any lingering doubts about the value and virtue of the serial comma as opposed to not having it at all.
In closing, Max, let me say that I greatly appreciate the kind of questions you have posted in the Forum. They allow me to clarify confusing English usage that rarely gets discussed adequately.
