“Grubhub to pay $25M for ‘deceptive’ practices against customers, drivers” I’ve been seeing this quite a bit in news headlines. Does the comma replace an “&”? Is it just a weird clickbaity incomplete sentence thing?
It’s a specific type of shorthand you see almost exclusively in news headlines. It means “and” - the sentence reads “Grubhub to pay…against customers and drivers”
Typically you will only see it at the end of a clause. For instance you might see “Gorilla beats chest, drum; musical talent lacking” or “Gorilla beats chest, drum. Musical talent lacking.” And they both more or less mean “Gorilla beats his chest and a drum, but he doesn’t have any talent.” (Though the first example is more correct). However you would not expect to see “Gorilla beats chest, drum, musical talent lacking.” That would mean that the gorilla beats chest their chest, a drum, and they also beat their musical talent which was lacking. It is obviously nonsense
This is a literary device called asyndeton that is mostly used in oratory rather than in the written word, which is probably why it comes off a bit strange when reading it.
Oh wow that’s fascinating. As soon as I read your comment it clicked that this is more natural as a part of speech than writing.
And
here’s a great blog post i read last year that outlines many rules used to write succinct headlines: https://www.englishnewspod.com/blog/cracking-the-code-understanding-news-headlines-in-english/
