Oxford Comma Dispute Escalates to Physical Altercation at Punctuation Symposium

The 31st Annual Symposium on English Punctuation erupted into violence Saturday when a panel discussion on the Oxford comma devolved into what Chicago Police are classifying as 'aggravated grammatical battery.' The altercation began during a Q&A session when Dr. Reginald Serial, a prominent Oxford comma advocate, presented a slide reading 'I love my parents, Batman, and Wonder Woman' and asked the audience to consider the alternative interpretation without the final comma. 'Without the Oxford comma, Batman and Wonder Woman become your parents,' Dr. Serial explained. 'This is not a ambiguity we can tolerate in civilized discourse.' Dr. Francesca Minimalist, a noted comma opponent, rose from the audience to counter that 'context resolves all alleged ambiguities' and that the Oxford comma represents 'typographical cowardice — a crutch for writers who cannot construct clear sentences.' What happened next is disputed. Dr. Serial's camp claims Dr. Minimalist threw a copy of the AP Stylebook. Dr. Minimalist's supporters maintain that Dr. Serial 'lunged with clear prepositional intent.' The resulting melee involved approximately thirty attendees and caused significant damage to the hotel's conference room, including the destruction of a decorative semicolon sculpture that had been commissioned for the event. Police reports describe the scene as 'dozens of adults in cardigans hitting each other with style guides.' Both factions have issued statements condemning the violence while simultaneously blaming the other side. The symposium has been suspended indefinitely, with organizers noting that 'punctuation should unite us, not divide us — though we acknowledge that it has, historically, done both.'