IDs: 2 variants of a "Toronto Star" headline for a book review article about new historical fiction books. The first reads: "Sylvia Plath, [comma] a New York vigilante and Shah of Iran featured in latest historical fiction."
The second reads: "The latest historical fiction books take inspiration from Sylvia Plath, [comma] a New York vigilante and Shah of Iran." There is a subheading reading "We review 'Daffodil Days,' 'Lady X,' 'Love Lane' and 'Mistress of the Persian Boarding House.' /end IDs.
the original, were it to mean that Sylvia Plath is a vigilante and shah, is missing an appositive comma (a pair of commas that separate a clarifying dependent phrase from the rest of the sentence, like the commas in the part of this sentence outside the parenthetical).
without the appositive comma, the only grammatically correct way to read the sentence is as a list without the oxford comma.
it is confusing because the comma in that place and the order of the list may prime you to read it as an appositive phrase, added to the fact that newspaper headlines drop helping/auxiliary verbs, and this headline did not clarify that there were multiple separate books with different subjects.
[i am a strong proponent of oxford comma, *especially* for three-item lists, just because it is clearer and more aesthetically pleasing. however, the sentence is grammatically correct to the intended meaning, and readers misinterpreting on first read does not mean it is wrong.]
the new phrasing... oh boy.
the new phrasing is now completely grammatically ambiguous as to whether it contains a list or an appositive phrase, because an appositive at the end of a sentence can be denoted by a comma and a period rather than 2 commas.
they fixed one problem with the ambiguity of the first headline by clarifying that it is about multiple separate books, but in doing so, their new phrasing adds proper grammatical ambiguity to the subject(s) of the books.
the second headline can reasonably and correctly to English grammar rules be parsed as either:
"Three subjects of new historical fiction books include writer Sylvia Plath, a New York vigilante, and the Shah of Iran." (the intended meaning)
or, "Multiple historical fiction books have been published about Sylvia Plath, who was also a New York vigilante and the Shah of Iran."
both are equally correct readings of this headline!
while the first headline was colloquially ambiguous but grammatically correct to the intended message, the second headline tried to fix the misinterpretations by clarifying that there were multiple books, and providing a list in the subheading of the books in question. [the list also does not use oxford comma, per the paper's style guide i'm sure, but it is completely unambiguous due to both the single quotes as title markers and having more than 3 items on the list.]
however, the rephrasing of the headline actually introduced more ambiguity, because it is now completely grammatically unclear whether there exist at least four books featuring Plath as a vigilante-slash-Shah, or multiple historical fiction books with a wide variety of subjects.
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