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> An Oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice, it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea.

This is simply a run-on, not a use of an Oxford comma as I understand it. And these bother me a lot.

"An oxford comma is not a flip switch in an author's voice"

is a grammatically complete sentence. So is

"it's a decision made in the moment to maintain the flow of the idea."

Separate them by a strong punctuation mark. If you want the rhythm of a comma, separate them by a semi-colon in preference to a stop. Semi-colons are made for this.




Several people in this thread are claiming that punctuation is used to convey information about how to pronounce the sentence.

You're saying (and I tend to agree with you) that written punctuation is about meaning, and not about where a speaker would pause to take a breath.

Can these two be kludged into a unified meaning? "Write better so that your written words sound good when spoken"?


I'm saying that punctuation has already solved this problem with the semi-colon. If you have two sentences where the second follows the other so closely that there is barely a breath in between, use a semi-colon rather than a stop. You convey both meaning and flow at the same time, and you keep the grammaticasters happy.


Ah, I love semicolons -- but they're not always as aesthetic as commas (and vice-versa). I find this is mostly a question of overall style and context (the more pretentious the text, the more out of place the semicolon; unless you're aspiring to be a pretentious (post-)modern text -- then the semicolon wins).




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