this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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To be clear, you can't omit the comma and make it ambiguous if you simply acknowledge it's wrong and don't make it a confusing optional thing. The comma is more ambiguous than the ambiguity it's trying to solve.
But I don't think I buy your theory of it being a difference in how you picture it because, again, all of these are sentences you can and often do say out loud. Either you are constantly confused when people talk to you about more than two things or this is not a big deal unless you psyche yourself out by considering whether the omitted comma should be present.
And if there is any room for ambiguity, in speech and in writing it's easy to resolve by simply changing the order or by adding an extra word, which is just as much effort as the comma with the advantage that it solves the open question of whether the comma should have been there.
So for instance, "I invited the strippers and also JFK and Stalin". This is unnecessary in this example, but it has the undeniable advantage that it's just as clear in speech as in writing.
OK, here's another way to look at it.
Let's say the strippers are called JFK and Stalin, for some reason.
How do you make that undeniably clear with no ambiguity? Give me a sentence, written with no other words in the way I did above, that is unambiguous about the names of the strippers.
You can't. Because in a world where the comma is optional the sentence with no comma is always ambiguous. The comma solves nothing.
I think we both agree that the comma being optional is the mother of ten thousand confusions, we just disagree on what should be done about that.
If the Oxford comma was required, the sentence naming the strippers as JFK and Stalin no longer has any ambiguity whatsoever; it can only mean one thing.
If the Oxford comma was banned, the sentence naming the strippers would have to be rearranged entirely to avoid ambiguity. Instead of being able to clarify the relationship with a single keypress or tiny jot, we have to edit the entire sentence (the simplest way I can think of would be to say "JFK and Stalin are the strippers I invited.")
As for the bit about speech, you've lost me. I've never had a conversation with another native English speaker (and I've lived in 10 different US states, from Texas to Connecticut) where a list of three or more things was spoken without a pause before the "and". Maybe it's different in other English-speaking countries? I also used to have regular conversations with an Australian, and I never noticed any confusion, but that was some 20ish years ago now, so my memory might not be reliable.
Alright, now THAT would be a perception thing, in that I fully believe that you default to the Oxford comma and fill in an alleged difference between those two reads of the sentence in your head where I do not. I don't believe it's a regional thing at all. You can overinflect through the ambiguity, but you're way more likely to simply construct the sentence unambiguously.
And no, it's not as hard as you make it out to be. There are so many little ways you'd adjust that line in speech without even thinking about it. Like I said, you can say "I invited the strippers and also Stalin and JFL" or "I invited the strippers, that's Stalin and JFK", neither of which are ambiguous no matter how you pronounce them. You could go "I invited the strippers, you know, Stalin and JFK", or say "I invited the strippers, I invited Stalin and JFK,...".
All of those are way more likely to subconsciously be used as a workaround to the ambiguity that absolutely is there in speech rather than have the listener go 'sorry, was that a long pause or a short pause before the "and"?'
But yeah, we do agree that with no consensus about the Oxford comma, the existence of the Oxford comma makes these sentences MORE ambiguous, not less, even if you consistently use the Oxford comma. Whether you think it's a better solution or not, with no universal authority on the subject the solution to the problem is to correctly phrase the sentence for clarity if needed. But many of the examples provided for this are deliberately obtuse and do not need any adjustment, being obvious in context.
I just gotta say, hot damn is it nice to have a discussion like this. Your view is rational and grounded, I just disagree with it (although I disagree with you less strongly, and on fewer points, than I did at the start). I've really enjoyed it.
I still like the Oxford comma, but I completely see where you're coming from now.
Hah. The fun part is this is the actively trolling, shitposting thread. I obviously don't care that much about the Oxford comma (but no, seriously, screw the Oxford comma).
Like, imagine what the actually constructive conversations here must be like :)