[Diary] Schedule

[dancefloorlandmine]

Right, looks like I'll be scoring the lyrics quiz on Thursday or Friday, which gives you a few days to have a go.

In the meantime, I'll try to get around to scanning the pics from the last Dead and Buried - hopefully before this one. And also working on a lyrics quiz on which people should be able to get reasonable scores (although there have been some surprising hits and misses on the one above).

Schedule
Tue - eve: At home. Doing washing up, revision,¹ and suchlike domestic tasks.
Wed - eve: MSc lecture and revision
Thu - eve: Going out for a drink with Kitty
Fri - eve: Quite possibly Dead and Buried
Sat - day: Board gaming, as arrange by thecesspit. All welcome - see his LJ for details.
Sat - eve: Party in East London
Sun - day: Recovering and garden pottering, with probably revision
Sun - eve: Clarets, anyone?
Mon - eve: Date - but need to sort details

So, looking like another full week again.

¹ With apologies to valkyriekaren for the use of the 'Oxford comma'

Comments

[flick.livejournal.com]

The latter: an Oxford comma is used when the penultimate thing on the list has an "and" in it, to avoid confusion.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

Really? I always thought it was just the comma before the last item in a list, which some people don't use!
*scurries off to re-read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves*

[flick.livejournal.com]

From the Economist Style Guide:
Do not put a comma before and at the end of a sequence of items unless one of the items includes another and. Thus The doctor suggested an aspirin, half a grapefruit and a cup of broth. But he ordered scrambled eggs, whisky and soda, and a selection from the trolley. But American usage is different; see Part II.
and
Americans often put a comma before the and: eggs, bacon, potatoes, and cheese. The British usually write eggs, bacon, potatoes and cheese.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

"heh" I can't really take grammatical advice seriously form a source which fails to put the "and" in quotation marks in that first sentence...
This and this back up what I thought about the Oxford comma, and suggest that Simon's original use was correct (at least as far as the OUP is concerned, and that's good enough for me!)!

[flick.livejournal.com]

My bad re: the last of inverted commas. The original gets around it by formatting differently. I should have done the same.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

The doctor suggested an aspirin, half a grapefruit and a cup of broth. But he ordered scrambled eggs, whisky and soda, and a selection from the trolley.

That has a whiff of Ian Fleming to it. Sounds like Commander Bond recuperating from another spell of homoerotic espionage excesses...

[flick.livejournal.com]

Actually, it seems to vary. I've just done some more googling, and other sites say that it is any serial comma, but that the instance I originally quoted is the only one that everyone agrees is acceptable (rather than just the Americans).

[steer.livejournal.com]

That is what I thought too.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Hmm... are you sure? The canonical argument in favour of the Oxford comma ("To my parents, Ayn Rand and God" -- a hypothetical book dedication) no such specification is made.

Some web refs:

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutother/oxfordcomma

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxabandc.html

http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-oxf1.htm

But these are only web refs and my grammar is poor. I don't use them myself but have no strong feelings.

[flick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been googling too and I'm less sure than I was.

I was always taught that it was used to avoid the and... and compound, but it may be that I was taught that becuase the idea of a serial comma for any other reason was completely beyond the pale!

[steer.livejournal.com]

I think I was taught the same as you actually -- don't put a comma before that last and unless you really, really need to. But (as I said) my grammar is awful.