The Best Sentence of 2017 (That Was Never Written)



Here is my favorite moment of 2017 that I should have written a sentence about: we were doing some peer-editing in my college writing class and a sweet and lovely female student asked me my position on placing a comma after the penultimate item in a list-- she wanted to know if I was for placing this comma or against placing this comma, which is commonly known as the "serial comma" or the "Oxford comma," because it was traditionally used by editors and printers at Oxford University Press (but it was usually omitted by most newspapers, to save space and ink) and this lovely student asked me about this comma with all sincerity, as I am her teacher (and her writing teacher at that) but the projector was on and I couldn't ignore the perfect comedic set-up she had given me, so I told her I would play a short eductional video to explain what I thought on the matter (I love the "educational video" set up) and I cued up Vampire Weekend's song on this subject and let it play for 27 seconds and then we all laughed, as the matter was firmly resolved.




5 comments:

  1. On GTB I commented today "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?" Is this a Gheorghemas miracle or did my comment jog your memory and this prompt this post?

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  2. it did jog my memory, and i started my sentence recounting this but it was it was too much set-up for an incident that already required a great deal of set up. you can take credit for this one.

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  3. if it wasn't for your comment, this sentence about not writing a sentence would have never been written!

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  4. only if you go back in time to before i started this blog and write the sentence yourself. and then abduct your own double before he tells me you did this.

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