Today is Day 28 of BookBlogWriMo! 

This post's topic is My Book Pet Peeves. 

Warning, this post may turn into a rant!

http://4evercrazyforya.blogspot.com/2014/11/bookblogwrimo-book-pet-peeves.html 

I feel like all I do these days is post grumblings about the grammar police, but then I also feel like I'm waging a one-woman war on facebook to get people to stop being dicks about rules that either aren't really rules, or don't matter in informal contexts. Sure, I'm not a fan of sloppy, inelegant or badly phrased writing, but following a series of contested or outdated grammar rules will not fix shitty writing. The Oxford comma partisans always point out these badly worded sentences as "proof" that the serial comma should be used in every single sentence, and I always think, "Bro, you need to reword that shit, pronto. Ain't no comma going to fix that sentence." For example:

"By train, plane and sedan chair, Peter Ustinov retraces a journey made by Mark Twain a century ago. The highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector."

Adding the Oxford comma keeps Mandela from being a dildo collector, but he's still, apparently, an 800 year old demigod.