This poster at BIG W perfectly encapsulates two grammatical issues in separate ruminations of mine from this year: hyphenation and capitalisation. Advertisers and marketers need to lift their game.

@martinfeld 🤣🤣🤣

@martinfeld My kingdom for an editor—or an English major—in the company 😂

@prologic Haha glad you liked it!

@smokey Haha now that’s a good quotation.

@martinfeld I pictured someone in Maine saying something similar 😂

@smokey Haha I remember that John Gruber linked to this! It’s certainly interesting to consider a case like this. I prefer not to use an Oxford comma, which is undoubtedly a symptom of being Australian and growing up with something that’s closer to British English.

In my opinion, the potential for misunderstanding or doubt only really exists because of the introduction of the Oxford comma in the first place, since there are now two ways to write the same thing. I’ve never come across a case like this in Australia due to the lack of such a comma. That being said, I’m not against it entirely and see it as a natural splintering or evolution of language. As long as people are clear in what they say and write, then it shouldn’t be a big deal and everyone should get over it.

@martinfeld @smokey Death to the Oxford comma! (Seriously.) The Maine case was an example of bad drafting. The Oxford comma might have saved it, but it would still have been bad drafting.

@artkavanagh That’s a fair point about the bad drafting. Like I said, it’s about being clear. If you write well and make your message easy to understand then such a punctuation mark is generally unnecessary.

@martinfeld I have been using the Oxford comma since I was very small, despite school’s efforts to beat it out of me, but I always prefer to try and find another way to make things clear, if I can ;-)

@smokey If it works for you and it makes sense and people understand what it means when you use it, then power to you! I’m generally pretty intense about grammar but this is something that clearly works both ways, so I’m not as hardcore about it.

@bix I love the passion and although I don’t use the Oxford comma, I support your devotion to it!

@bix @smokey @artkavanagh I know that @liss is also very passionate about the Oxford comma. We all just have to accept that English is the property of many people around the globe—beyond that one island where it first flourished. There isn’t one English now; there are numerous Englishes, each with their own interesting rules!