Rudy and the Oxford Comma

An excellent example of the importance of the Oxford comma has been documented in the soup of social media. It was crafted with the exactitude of a well-trained and long practicing legal mind so read and learn.

I’m not sure who Catturd is and can only conjecture that since he (or she: do cat turds have gender?) has nothing in common with all those prominent Republicans, he probably shouldn’t be a Republican and the rapid half-life of a third party seems like the better choice for future obscurity.

But in Catturd’s defense, note that the tweet contains an excellent example of the use of the Oxford, or Series, comma, even though the average reader would probably understand the import of the message without the comma. However, Rudy Giuliani’s does not use the Oxford comma and it results in a presumably unintended meaning. Without the comma his sentence clearly suggests that we should keep the Party of Lincoln while also suggesting that Reagan and Trump and the traitors should leave.

If Reagan and Trump leave with the traitors, does that imply that they too are members of the group traitors?

Yet even with the comma, there is still a confusion in Rudy’s tweet. Is it the Party of Lincoln and two other guys not in that party, or is it the Party of the two other guys and Lincoln? Also, since Catturd is adamant about leaving the Republican Party (3rd party for me only) is Rudy then suggesting that anyone leaving the party must be a traitor? Does this answer the above question? If Reagan and Trump leave they are by Rudy’s own definition, traitors.

I think Rudy could easily remove these doubts and confusions by simply rewriting his Twitter post like this:

I have disgraced my party and my country and am withdrawing to worship Catturd and sell cigars.

It’s an oldie but it might be a good time for a refresher.

One thought on “Rudy and the Oxford Comma

What are your thoughts on this?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s