no clue

You're no monkey! You're just an Ed! :P

NSFW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1CGauwoKcw

Chimps are scary too!

When I write book reviews I don't use them because the newspaper doesn't like them, but in everything else I write I do because to me it more closely follows the cadence of speaking.

I just read a good example. Say you're dedicating a book and you write "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God." To me, that's indicating that your parents are Ayn Rand and God. But if you write "To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God" there is no faulty interpretation. Of course, you could reverse the sentence to eliminate the ambiguity and the Oxford - "To Ayn Rand, God and my parents" so a lot of it comes down to how you actually construct sentences.

Seems there are a lot of well-known style guides that are pro-Oxford, but for some reason this often gets overlooked in favor the AP "no Oxford" approach.

This and the somehow not-so-tiny issue of some typing their messages on hand-held devices,..

:(
i said unless you really need it, i know the examples. I am educated (this is grammar school stuff). lit people and writers are so pretentious. ;) hahahaha (joke, I am one of those people...)

further, the 'and' works as a comma, so the person will pause appropriately. Anyways, do you really pause any differently when you read the two sentences? I don't.

Besides, having a comma after and just looks cluttered. And what if you do believe Ayn Rand and god are your parents? huh? what then? ;) Context is also a big thing here. Your brain is an awesome organ and can figure out what the author meant. No one reading the sentence, "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God" for a minute thought the person meant that those two were his parents. You can't hear commas after 'and' in speech and no one is confused. Soooo, unnecessary! :)

Edit: I love how THIS is our big thing in the writing community. we are so weird. a comma? that's the big debate? lol

Sometimes, it's hard to tell.

I write English very well, but English is still my second language. My English was abysmal until I was 13. After that, I learned English informally through various sources. I did take advanced English in my fourth year of high school, but they were well past the point where they analysed the finer points of grammar formally... so instead it was mostly about reading books and writing essays so I would pretty much learn by trial and error based on the mistakes I did with the essays.

It happens less and less over time, but occasionally, I'll still do a mistake that will throw a native English speaker aback. Of course, it doesn't help either that I have to hold two separate languages in my mind (sometimes, there is the occasional crossover).

Sometimes, people are lazy and you can tell right away (ie, 'u' instead of 'you'), but do try to give posters the benefit of the doubt.

Never make assumptions about Ed's species ;)

Yeah, that's what we really need to be worried about. =/

Ounce for ounce Thant ink costs more than gold.

I don't know if it's a Canadian thing, but I was taught to use the Oxford comma and sentences always look off/wrong/weird to me without it.

Comma's fuckers do.

Sorry that makes sense only in Finnish, and even then only barely. Keyword "pilkunnussijat".

The US spent thousands and thousands of dollars developing a pen that would write in space. The russians used a pencil.