When Commas Are Life and Death

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My favourite comma use quote is this: “My three favourite things are eating my family and not using commas.”

I love how the lower court was like "well obviously the legislature intended to screw over as many workers as possible"

In Russia, there's a whole cartoon about a boy who doesn't care about grammar or school in general until he gets into a magic world where he gotta help those he meets and himself by correctly resolving the tasks that are actually school exercices. After some time there, for whatever reason, he gets imprisoned, and he gotta himself decide his fate by placing a comma in a verdict which roughly translates as "Execute not pardon", and, as you understand, the placement of comma after the first or the second word is literally a question of life or death. The cartoon is really popular, and the phrase "Execute not pardon" is known by roughly all Russian people.

i've always loved the example my teacher used for the importance of proper grammar.... "Let's eat, kids!" vs. "Let's eat kids!" The difference between a nice family evening and mass murder and cannibalism is a comma.

Game designer here with a horrifying fact: there are a solid chunk of designers who just forego commas in design docs in a lot of places, and leads just go like “it’s fine it’s still understandable” Hurts to no end

Watching legal eagle instead of studying for my EU law exam is my new hobby

My favourite comma poem: "Q: What is the difference between a cat and a comma? A: A comma is a pause at the end of a clause, where a cat has claws at the end of its paws." From an independent Irishman, Roger Casement is not forgotten.

And now I know what an Oxford comma is. I grew up in Oxfordshire and was taught in school that you don't use a comma that way. Then again I was also told in no uncertain terms that you never start a sentence with the word 'And' and look how that turned out.

“No, it’s like five Half as Interesting videos crammed into one.” Two and a half times as interesting

“Needless to say, the case was bananas.” My client wishes to re-peel that statement.

When a man who is actively suing the government says “sue me,” you know he ain’t playin.

I love this video! THANK YOU! Another good example is: A: "Bill, George, and I are going to the store." B: "Bill, George and I are going to the store." In example A, I am telling an unnamed fourth person (the reader/listener) that three people are going to the store: Bill, George, and myself. In example B, I am telling Bill that George and I (only two people) are going to the store.

I loved how they decided to settle on a semicolon to really hammer down their points. It's like using cement to fix holes in the roof after the epoxy didn't work.

As a voice actor, the casual relationship some writers have with the Oxford comma can be quite maddening. I've had to record many retakes over the years because the use of (or lack of) an Oxford comma often drastically changes how you vocally stress some words and pause before other words.

As an English teacher, this video makes me so happy! I got a good laugh from this, and I am totally sharing this with my students tomorrow!

Small correction: Casement wasn't investigating Belgian human rights abuses in Peru, that's conflating two separate cases. Casement was already famous for publishing the 1905 Casement Report, which exposed the atrocities being done against natives in the Congo by Belgian soldiers and mercenaries for the first time. He was knighted in 1911 for his investigation and exposure of the practices of Peruvian and Brazilian rubber barons.

There was a great British book about punctuation called Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The title came from this story: a panda walks into a bar. He orders a sandwich. After finishing it, he produces a rifle that he fires into the air and walks out. As he's walking out, the barman asks him why he did that. "Look me up in the dictionary and you will find out." The barman looks him up: "the panda, bear originating from China, eats, shoots and leaves." Punctuation matters.

So META and surreal when legal eagle and HAI reference each other in the youtube educational universe.

Oxford commas aren't always needed... but when they are, they save gallons of brain cells.