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A comment on Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute. Parent comment

Re: Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions i... by in_cahoots on Friday March 17, 2017 @11:38AM (#13894776)
The thing I don't understand is, if we take the last two elements in the list to be a compound, shouldn't there still be a conjunction before them? If I say you can choose between "French toast, cereal and bacon and eggs" that is very different from saying "French toast, cereal, bacon and eggs" regardless of whether the Oxford comma is used.

The fact that this law doesn't have a second conjunction should be definitive in showing how it was meant to be interpreted.

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Re: Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions i... by E6300 on Friday March 17, 2017 @11:55AM (#13894943)
What they should have done is write "packing for distribution or distribution of". They forgot they were writing a law, not a book, and that clarity is more important than aesthetics. As it is, the sentence contains one more ambiguity, which is whether there's a distinction between shipment and distribution.
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Re: Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions i... by gnicholas on Friday March 17, 2017 @11:49AM (#13894876)
Yeah, the NYT article doesn't address the argument regarding asyndeton, which is the omission of a conjunction at the end of a list. See the Volokh Conspiracy article for a discussion of this.
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