wut r we talkin' bout.

tawkin n ritin goodly

And now for something completely different...

a very effective teaching method !

Oh, I don't know... I think it depends on what kind of strippers you want.

I really like that one!

To correct a year-old misunderstanding, I put criticise in bold for emphasis in reading. It should have been in italics of course. I was saying that yes I noticed errors and yes they bugged me, but if I responded it was not my intention to be critical.

Any.
Way.
Sorry.

I didn't know it was called an Oxford comma.
I was taught to write without it though.

There are many ambiguous sentences in written English.
I once read the sentence "After finishing school, x went on to pursue a career in..." and thought "Hang on, I thought only rich girls went to finishing school? Is that a deliberate joke?"

Er, no. The sentence made perfect sense but I'd read something else into it.

Sun, I have no frigging clue. I repeatedly dropped out of HS English Language classes and opted for public speaking, and competitive speech classes. Me: Not strong on gramer and spelling but I can stand in front of a crowd of 300 and tell you what I think about issues, in person. I taught graduate level adult education for 6 years as adjunct faculty with the Univ of Texas in a clinical setting. I am not very strong on paper (or XX's and 00's as most of you know).

My Nephew, who just went to Austria for Grad School, posted it on his FB page and I thought others might get a kick out of it. Funny. That is all.....

The Oxford comma (I never knew it has a name!) was introduced around the early 90's. When we were learning how to write, we weren't supposed to put a comma before the word 'and.' From what I heard, we had lawyers to thank for the grammar change. They needed that extra comma to make things clearer in legal documents.

Strunk and White calls for a comma before the 'and' in a list.

Language is always in flux.
English in particular.
Split infinitives and starting a sentence with a connective are fads of fashion. In that sense I think I'd apply the rule of understanding.

Using the wrong tense or homonym I find more jarring.
Don't break down the fourth wall unintentionally.

I heard someone say that the comma was dropped by newspapers, to save space in their print. I don't know if this is true.

No, no, it was to save pixels on yon internet thingy, they're all being used for porn now probably, I think.

Dwarf pron?

IMHO, the poster is wrong.

"... the strippers, JFK and Stalin" is a list of three items of equal grammatical importance. This describes the first picture.

"... the strippers JFK and Stalin" or "... the strippers: JFK and Stalin" would create a parallel structure where "strippers" modifies both "JFK" and "Stalin". This describes the second picture.

"... the strippers, JFK, and Stalin" has a redundant comma. The 'here comes the next item' function of a comma is served by the 'here comes the final item' function of "and".

You don't write "I invited JFK, and Stalin." do you?

And by not writing Oxford commas for ten years I saved almost enough time to write this post. :D