Mar 22, 2012 / Language & Grammar

The Oxford Comma

I’ve avoided it so far, since it’s something of a holy war, but I thought I’d stir the grammatical pot a little this week and take a stance on the Oxford comma. I worked as a copy editor at a newspaper for a year long ago, and the Associated Press style guide dictated that we omit the comma before the final item in a series (presumably because it saved a smidgin of column width on the page). An example will help clarify:

John went to the store to buy bacon, eggs and milk.

John went to the store to buy bacon, eggs, and milk.

The first sentences omits the final comma, while the second includes it. In a sentence like this, it’s hard to make a very strong case that one comma style is better than the other. But what if we want to make a more complex sentence?

John went to the store to buy bacon, eggs and milk and ran out of gas on the way home.

Omitting the comma makes me rush the sentence as I read it over, so that to my mind’s ear, “eggs and milk” comes out more like a single unit — “eggsandmilk” — as I move forward in the sentence. The final comma provides an explicit break in the rhythm of the sentence that you must supply yourself if the guidepost comma is missing. Scanning over the sentence visually before reading it, it looks as if it will be a compound sentence with one pause in the middle, and the fact that it is in fact a different sort of sentence is at odds with the expectation that a quick glance at the punctuation sets.

Leaving out the final comma in a series can also cause ambiguity, often to humorous effect. Consider these examples I’ve borrowed from the Wikipedia article on the serial comma:

  • To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
  • Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

I’ve recently seen online several references to a funny cartoon example  (not terribly dirty, but also not entirely clean, so click with that in mind) providing an example that includes “the strippers, JFK and Stalin.” Of course, anybody reading these funny examples can understand what the author means, but I can certainly imagine cases in which real ambiguity arose from the omission of the final comma.

So, where do you stand on the Oxford comma, and what’s your rationale? I’m very much in favor of it.

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  1. Thank you for the post. I review executive correspondence and have also taught basic grammar for several years. This is what I tell students and others I mentor on the use of commas: don’t over-use them. The need to use the four different types of sentences or the comma on the last item in a series can be a reality. Best is to keep things simple and clear…even better, stick to short sentences. Always motivated, Jose LugoSantiago

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  2. E.B. White advised me at an early age–via Strunk and White–to use the serial comma. I love your examples.
    Patty

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  5. Instead of having a strict rule as to whether the final comma should be used or not, it would be convenient to look at the context in which it is being used.

    If omitting the comma is saving column width without distorting the message or creating considerable ambiguity, there’s no harm in keeping it out.

    If, however, its omission is killing the message like in “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God”, or in the cartoon (which was hilarious), then it should be used.

    I personally have no rule when it comes to the use of the Oxford Comma. I always write without it and when I’m reviewing my work, and something doesn’t sound right, I just chip it in.

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  6. To me, the point of *not* having a comma before the final element of a list is that it is a list – the ‘and’ binds the final element of the list to the rest of it, without the conceptual ‘pause’ implied by the comma. In speaking, I wouldn’t pause before the ‘and’, so in writing I wouldn’t use a comma.

    However, there is no general reason not to use a comma before ‘and’ where it’s not part of a list; to take your example:

    “John went to the store to buy bacon, eggs and milk and ran out of gas on the way home”.

    I’d make it

    “John went to the store to buy bacon, eggs and milk, and ran out of gas on the way home”.

    There’s no conceptual link between the buying of groceries and the running out of fuel, so a comma is appropriate – these are two separate activities. Furthermore, one would naturally pause in speaking that sentence, so again the comma use follows speech.

    As with any grammatical rule, though, one has to remember that the purpose of language is to communicate, and the purpose of grammar is to aid communication. If a comma helps people understand, use it; but to me, the use of a comma before the ‘and’ in completing a list creates a conceptual division which actually breaks up the sense of the list, and therefore generally inhibits understanding.

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    1. Ah, but I do pause before that “and” (else it’d sound like “bacon, eggsandmilk”). In fact, I think the tendency in natural English speech is probably to pause just a hair longer before that final item in a list as a cue that it’ll be the last item (one of those things we do without thinking about it, the same way we raise our pitch when asking a question).

      Your addition of a comma between the clauses in the sample sentence actually sort of breaks another comma rule, which is that if you have a compound sentence whose subjects are the same (that is, the same person is doing both parts of the sentence), then you don’t separate the clauses with a comma. By contrast, if your compound sentence has two subjects, you do use the comma. It’s usually ok to insert a comma if it makes the sentence clearer (especially for longer or comlex sentences), but I really don’t like the use of a comma in this situation. That said, adding the Oxford comma doesn’t necessarily fix the sentence either (the two ands so close together still present a problem), so in real life, I’d probably rephrase.

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  9. I learned not to include the final comma at school, and on joining a newspaper I was promptly told to include it.

    Only discovered it was called an Oxford comma a couple of years ago and had no idea it was controversial. Thought it was part of life.

    Who gets wound up about a comma? 😀

    Jose had some great advice, don’t overuse, keep everything short and simple and stick to short sentences.

    Our minimum for an intro was 12 words, but no more than 20. That may give you a post. Intros? Or perhaps I will write it first on my blog 😀

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  10. A fabulous post :). The comic explanation can’t be clearer 🙂 I wish I thought about it while I was teaching English some years ago.

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  11. I’ve been an English teacher for 44 years. I’ve also been a novelist, a newspaper reporter, a columnist, an editor, and a book publisher for many years in the past two decades. My experience has taught me that the Oxford comma gives the reader a definite advantage in the vast majority of texts. I always use it and require all my students to do the same. Two newspapers I worked for used an editorial style that required it to be eliminated, but I always sent my stories in with the Oxford comma in place. My position was that I wrote the article in the format that I considered the only “correct” and acceptable style. If they wanted to use a style that was less perfect, they were welcome to change it. They did.

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  12. In total agreement with, and support of ‘Oxford comma’. I, however, never knew that there was a term for it.
    My middle school English teacher, yelled every time she noticed that mistake in the home-works. 😀
    Despite that, I am still not so sure that I never made the mistake again.

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  14. Perhaps reading it aloud would help clarify the necessity of the comma. This lets you not only see but hear as the reader does and that is what answers the “to use or not to use” question for me. Personally, I don’t use it unless it does not read as I intended. Loved the analogy of the rushed words.

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