I love Oxford commas. I really do. On the printed page, they help my brain process the words I’m reading. In official correspondence, they help to make my meaning absolutely clear.
In an ebook? They can really slow things down.
That doesn’t mean I can just skip the commas and hope for the best. It means there’s an extra level of challenge. My writing needs to adapt from the academic grammar I learned in school to fit the new media used to communicate stories today. I have to be sure that my meaning remains clear while crafting stories that will read well both on the printed page and the digital.
Maybe someday writers will be blogging about adapting their stories to the new holo-novel formatting (how cool would that be?). In the end, it’s all about providing a satisfying and fun experience for the reader. I’ll do my best!
Ah yes…giving up The Preciouses, hehe. You’re dealing rather well, I must say. And I agree–natural language is, at its heart, adaptable because humans are adaptable. And OMG, interactive fiction is already A Thing–visual novels, hypertext fiction, narrative heavy games…I cannot WAIT for holo-novels, lol.
It is a very good time to be a writer 🙂