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Pedants' corner

Punctuation matters

(31 Posts)
FannyCornforth Fri 07-Apr-23 08:57:45

I’ve seen this example lots of times.
It’s obviously a joke, but I didn’t know whether it was apocryphal or not.
Anyway, after much googling, it turns out that it was based on a dedication in a real book (1964) which did actually used the Oxford comma (or serial comma).
The second part (the Mandela bit) was tagged on later, and was based on a TV listing for a Peter Ustinov travel programme.

argymargy Fri 07-Apr-23 08:14:17

I'm not a fan of the Oxford comma - each of those sentences could have been easily re-ordered to negate the need for a comma. Bah humbug!

absent Fri 07-Apr-23 08:12:32

The one I really love is: "Those things over there are my husbands." Those things over there are my husband's".

Calendargirl Fri 07-Apr-23 07:44:16

Just been reading a job advert on my local Facebook page. It was for a car sales rep.

Full of ‘car’s’, ‘sale’s’, ‘customer’s’ etc. The apostrophe in the wrong place in every sentence.

The job required excellent computer skills, as everything was computer based.

Just not the punctuation.

Squiffy Thu 06-Apr-23 20:17:29

😆

Elegran Thu 06-Apr-23 20:13:05

A gem from Facebook.