Tradiling

From Pixabay

Today’s post is the first of an occasional series that Tradiling readers can contribute to: Favourite selections.

The idea of favourite selections is not original. Books of quotations, anthologies of music, tourist guides, they are all based on the same idea. But the notion of a paragraph-length text selection is not so frequent. Let’s see how it goes.

If you wish to contribute, please just bear in mind that the selection should not be too long and write to me at rsamson@uvic.cat with your proposal.

If you put “favourite selections” into a search engine, the results include a lot of music, some book clubs, food, Reader’s Digest, Bible verses, and much more.

For my “favourite selection” below I have disclosed neither the author nor the source, though you can find both easily enough by searching the web.

For those of you ready to indulge me, the challenge is to read the following paragraph and see if you notice anything unusual about it, without searching for online help.

Leave your suggestions in the comments, please. The usual much sought-after distinctions will be festooned on those who suggest noteworthy answers.

With all its manifold new words from other tongues, English could never have become anything but English. And as such it has sent out to the world, among many other things, some of the best books the world has ever known. It is not unlikely, in the light of writings by English speakers in earlier times, that this would have been so even if we had never taken any words from outside the word hoard that has come down to us from those times. It is true that what we have borrowed has brought greater wealth to our word stock, but the true Englishness of our mother tongue has in no way been lessened by such loans, as those who speak and write it lovingly will always keep in mind.

Just a little summer fun!

Tradiling will be back with more topical content (including your own favourite selection?) in September. For those of you on holiday, have a great one.

(CC-BY-SA 2.0) From Stephen O, Flickr

What is the Oxford comma and should you use it?

The Oxford comma (also known as Harvard comma or serial comma) is a style of punctuation that involves separating the last two items in a list with a comma followed by “and”. The two styles, with and without the comma, are broadly speaking separated by an ocean. The style with a comma is generally preferred in the USA, while the style without a comma is favoured by the British. Except, that is, for the Oxford University Press in-house style. Hence the name.

Most British writers feel that this last comma in a list is unnecessary and, following the dictum “The less, the better” as far as punctuation is concerned, omit this final comma. So we have:

• “I bought some apples, oranges and pears.” (with no Oxford comma)
• “I bought some apples, oranges, and pears.” (with the Oxford comma)

The problem is that, with or without the comma, depending on the items in the list, ambiguity could arise from the dependency relationships within the list.

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