Huh, apparently WRT is read as "with respect to." Same idea, though. It's superfluous.

Serials commas match patterns of intonation much better than the alternative (this-pause-that-pause-and-the-other, not this-pause-that-and-the-other).

Well, like many have already said, there are times when they are necessary for clarification, but unless the sentence is elaborately constructed, I don't think they're inherently warranted (I have no idea if that last phrase is correct usage; I just wanted to sound fancy). For example, I think:

"He spent his winnings on hookers, blow and Cheez-Its. "

is simple enough to understand without the extra comma. If it was there, I'd read it as:

"He spent his winnings on hookers [pause] blow...[unnecessary pause]...and Cheez-Its."

Somewhat anti-climactic, and it kind of interrupts the flow, especially if you're referring to all three items as a single group.

But whatever. Now I want Cheez-Its.

I find the exact opposite to be true.

Speaking of grammar, don't you feel better about yourself ever since you stopped posting like a twelve-year-old girl?

But if they are needed for clarification sometimes (as you admit), it's best to just use them all the time, instead of relying on the writer's judgment.

I read the sentence without the last comma as "He spent his winnings on hookers [pause] blowandCheezIts."

No. "John's car", but "Ross' car"

imo

I might still be doing it if I wasn't prop bet on staying grammar clean for a month and I guess the period changed me.

Also, I imagine its got to suck subjecting other people to reading so much volume of poor form.

You guys are still nits though.

Which is exactly why that is my company's policy, and why I spend a good portion of my workday searching through 100-page technical manuals merely to insert 4 commas. Damn, it feels good to be necessary!

A "moo point" is something unimportant. It's like a cow's opinion - it doesn't matter. It's "moo".

Man, I bet there's a better way to do this. It seems to me that you could come up with some sort of regular expression that wouldn't quite get you all the way there but would massively filter what you have to look at. All you need is to pick out sentences with a , followed by an and and stopping at the first period encountered. My regexp fu is not strong but I'd think you could bang out a script that would do this with about 20 minutes of thought and then you'd be running things.

It's not really based on the writer's judgment. The AP Stylebook has very stringent rules about when to use a serial comma. In any instance not mentioned in the manual, it shouldn't be used. Two examples of the exception:

Long phrases:
His mom told him that after school he should go pick up the car from his father's house, drive to the soccer field where his brother will be playing, and pick up his brother to bring him to the pizza place.

Ambiguity:
His favorite ice cream brands are Edy's, Turkey Hill, and Ben and Jerry's.

There are others. But for the most part it shouldn't ever be a judgment call. It should be based on the rules (for whatever style you're writing for).

If the "catch" in "fair catch" is going to be used as a verb, then it should be "Number 85 caught the ball fairly on the 40 yard line," or at least "fairly caught the ball." You can use "fairly" as the last word in the sentence, too.

Serial commas are the only way to go, though I think that has a lot to do with my OCD. "Me, Myself, and I" is the only correct way to use commas.

I have no idea what you just said.

It's pretty easy to do some sort of search/replace on the electronic files, but marking up actual paper manuscripts can get pretty tedious. So I guess I should apologize to the serial commas for bearing the brunt of my wrath, when it's really my job in general that irks me.

Fail.

Edit: This is according to Strunk & White.

mia has informed me that "Ross'" is correct in AP style.

**** this.

Found this:

S&W has " 's " at the end of any possessive, no matter what it ends in, except for stuff like Jesus' or Moses' as stated above.

<on phone>
Me: Are you coming over to watch the movie?
Him: I'm just around the corner. I'll be there momentarily.
Me: You don't want to watch the movie?

Can't say I'm with you here, Slim. Either you're just being too nitty or misunderstanding how the phrase is applied.

* If I had Quiznos and you had Chipotle, then we had different lunches today.

*If we both had Quiznos, then we had the same lunch today.

*If we both had Quiznos and both ordered the regular Mesquite chicken with bacon, no tomatoes, with Nacho Cheese Doritos and a diet Pepsi, then we had the exact same lunch today.

It's all about the degree of similarity. "Exact same" implies more accuracy than "same."

wat

Yeah, not really understanding the faux pas in that one.

Bendru -- awesome.

horn -- Momentarily means "for a moment," not "in a moment." But I guess the whole 'common usage' argument gets used a lot here, so people will defend themselves by saying that these days it's acceptable to have both connotations.

momentarily means 'for a moment' not 'in a moment'.

"Many speakers object to the use of momentarily in the sense of "in a moment", since this is inconsistent with the meaning of momentary; nonetheless, this use is quite common in North America. The correct term for 'in a moment' is 'presently.'"

I don't think anyone thinks or talks like that, though. If I were talking to my wife at the end of the day, I'd say something like this:

Me: What'd you do for lunch?
Wife: I had a honey bacon club at Quiznos.
Me: I went to Quiznos also, but had the Classic Italian.

Your way:

You: What'd you do for lunch?
GF: I had a honey bacon club at Quiznos.
You: I had the same thing, a Classic Italian at Quiznos.
GF: WTF, I said honey bacon club, not classic italian. I hate that sub. I hate you. <hangs up phone>