Do you know what an Oxford comma is? E.g. in "We had toast, ham and egg, and milk". Here, the last item (milk) should be separated from the preceding ones (ham and egg) by a so-called Oxford comma. The reason being that the entry after the comma differs fundamentally from the preceding ones.

There is no such a thing in Japanese. But I recently discovered its Japanese equivalent when translating a patent:

A、B、及び、Cで置換されていてもよいD

At first glance, it is not clear whether this should read

1. A, and D which may be substituted by B and C,
or
2. A, B, and D which may be substituted by C

I arrived at the answer (that it's 2) using my humble knowledge of chemistry. It occurred to me, however, that the answer is actually hinted at by an usual comma (、) after 及び

You never see 及び、[i.e. “oyobi (=and)” with a comma] in Japanese print. Orthographically, and also language-feel wise, it's wrong. 

But I got the message from a patent attorney who in this way attempts to reinvent Japanese grammar!

Though all these may be too technical for non-Japanese to follow, I am so excited at my discovery and want to share it with language experts and legal minds in my community.

#japanese #punctuation  #comma