Serial comma The judge in the case said that 43 of the 50 U.S. states had mandated the use of a serial comma and that both chambers of the federal congress had warned against omitting it, in the words of the U.S. House Legislative Counsel's Manual on Drafting Style, "to prevent[] any misreading that the last item is part of the preceding one"; only 7 states "either do not require or expressly prohibited the use of the serial comma". In the following languages, the serial comma is not the norm and may go against punctuation rules: Serial comma In English language punctuation,
That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is is an English word sequence demonstrating syntactic ambiguity. It is used as an example illustrating the importance of proper punctuation. The sequence can be understood as any of four grammatically-correct sequences, each with at least four discrete sentences, by adding punctuation: The first two relate a simple philosophical proverb in the style of Parmenides that all that is, is, and that anything that does not exist does not. The phrase