Roy Peter Clark’s argument that AP should change its style and adopt the Oxford comma has received a lot of attention on Facebook and Twitter today.
Responses to the heated debate over whether journalists should use the serial comma (remember this classic Onion story about grammarian gang wars?) ranged from “yes, yes, and yes” to “no, no and no”:
Yes, yes, and yes. (See my punctuation there?) "AP Style should adopt the Oxford comma," via @Poynter http://t.co/TqW1I9jP9f
— Jason Silverstein (@jaysunsilver) June 23, 2014
No, no and no. RT @Poynter: Why AP should adopt the serial comma: http://t.co/tZnm3aJbvj "the journalists have it wrong"
— Ken Ericson (@kenericson) June 23, 2014
Last week FiveThirtyEight found that 57 percent of survey respondents were pro-Oxford comma. Those who rated their grammar skills highly were more likely to prefer it.
So we thought we’d ask Poynter readers for their input in a poll, too. Do we journalists “have it wrong,” as Roy argues? Or would you prefer AP keep things as they are and refrain from making another earthshattering change to its Stylebook?
We’ll post the results tomorrow.
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