[stephencanon]

"I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand, and God" is the usual example.

Yes, you can reorder the list to remove the ambiguity, but sometimes the order of the list matters. The serial comma should be used when necessary to remove ambiguity, and not used when it introduces ambiguity. Rewrite the sentence when necessary. Worth noting that this is the Oxford University Press's own style rule!

[alistairSH]

I always heard this one...

We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin to the party. [three groups invited - strippers, a president, and a premier]

We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin to the party. [the president and premier are strippers]

Very different visual conjured by those two sentences.

[comprev]

"John helped his uncle, Jack off a horse"

"John helped his uncle Jack off a horse"

Two very different outcomes...

[h4ch1]

shouldn't there be another comma after Jack?

John helped his uncle, Jack, off a horse.

Because while speaking it I only pause after uncle and "Jack off a horse" together next. feels like there should be another pause after Jack?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I'd prefer:

We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin, to the party [two strippers, named JFK and Stalin]

if the goal is to minimize ambiguity.

[al_borland]

I can see it being tiresome to read text where the author is continuously interjecting clarification with brackets.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The square-bracket clarifications here are meta-text designed to absolutely clarify the intended reading of the preceding text, so that the reader can contrast their understanding with the intended one.

There is no suggestion that one would do this in "regular" text.

[robertoandred]

If JFK and Stalin were strippers, there’d be a comma after Stalin to denote the parenthetical clause.

[Avshalom]

I mean first off: no the exact same image is conjured because we are reading this in context of knowing who jfk and stalin are and we know they aren't strippers and all language is contextual.

That said:

We invited the stripper, JFK, and Stalin to the party.

We invited the stripper, JFK and Stalin to the party.

The supposed ambiguity is back. Although again there is no ambiguity to the reader. The juxtaposition of the two versions wouldn't work as a joke if there was any ambiguity

[alistairSH]

Fine, I’ll be boring…

We invited the strippers, Krystal and Britney, to the party.

We invited the strippers, Krystal, and Britney, to the party.

And yes, if strippers is made singular, poor Krystal becomes Schrödinger‘s Stripper.

[yellowapple]

Removing the Oxford comma not only fails to resolve the ambiguity, but introduces yet more ambiguity by implying Ayn Rand to be God.

[Joker_vD]

Just put the colon there if you need to introduce a list, it's one of its functions. "I'd like to thank: my mother, Ayn Rand and God". The same goes for that "two strippers" example: "We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin, to the party".

[mmooss]

I want you to know that I would only write this in a discussion nitpicking about grammar: :)

> "I'd like to thank: my mother, Ayn Rand and God".

A colon should not connect a verb and its objects; generally you need an independent clause before the colon (i.e., a clause that could be a complete sentence). One could properly say,

  I'd like to thank the following: My mother, Ayn Rand and God.

Also, these examples leave ambiguity. Your mom could be Ayn Rand, and if she was, then you might very well think she was God, or be making a joke about it.

> "We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin, to the party"

Nope. A colon isn't a parenthetical in the middle of a sentence; that is, you can't continue the sentence after a colonic phrase (there's no such thing so I made up that term :D ). And again, the clause before that colon is not an independent clause. One can use parentheses (of course) or em dashes for parenthetical phrases:

  We invited strippers (JFK and Stalin) to the party.
  We invited strippers - JFK and Stalin - to the party.

A proper colon might be as follows:

  We invited strippers to the party: JFK and Stalin!

But I'd put an em dash there (and to heck with LLMs and their em dash overusage).