Who Cares About the Oxford Comma?
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Who cares about the Oxford comma? Plenty of people, it seems. Many writers, editors and language purists have strong feelings about whether or not the Oxford comma should be used. Some have even called it “a hill” they’re “prepared to die on”, both those who are for and against it.
Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, has issued not one but two memos to his staff outlining his preference for the Oxford comma. And under the Trump administration, a preference must be considered an order for anyone wanting to keep their job. However, “[o]n semicolons, Pompeo remains silent; on long dashes — not a tittle.” (From “Secretary of State Pompeo Is Mandating His Oxford Comma Preference at State Department, Report Says” by Glenn Fleishman, Fortune, 19 September 2018)
So what is the Oxford comma? Called the Oxford comma because it is required usage according to The Oxford Style Manual, and also known as a serial comma or a Harvard comma, it’s the comma used after the penultimate (second last) item in a list of three or more items.
With the Oxford comma: The shoes were red, shiny, and too small.
Without the Oxford comma: The shoes were red, shiny and too small.
There are two ways in which to use the Oxford comma:
*All the time as a stylistic choice (whether it’s your choice or the choice of an organisation you are working for or studying at)
*Only when necessary as a means of preventing ambiguity
Wikipedia has provided the following general formulas:
*The list x, y and z is unambiguous if y and z cannot be read as in apposition to x.
*Equally, x, y, and z is unambiguous if y cannot be read as in apposition to x.
*If neither y nor y[,] and z can be read as in apposition to x, then both forms of the list are unambiguous; but if both y and y and z can be read as in apposition to x, then both forms of the list are ambiguous.
*x and y and z is unambiguous if x and y and y and z cannot both be grouped.
Clear? As mud.
The majority of US style guides dictate use of the Oxford comma. The majority of British style guides, despite the preference of The Oxford Style Manual, dictate not using it. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, it is not used as standard. Other languages in which use of the Oxford comma goes against the rules include:
*Bosnian
*Croatian
*Serbian
*Montenegrin
*Danish
*Dutch
*Finnish
*French
*German
*Greek
*Hebrew
*Hungarian
*Icelandic
*Italian
*Norwegian
*Polish
*Portuguese
*Romanian
*Russian
*Spanish
*Swedish
*Turkish
So who is right? Who knows.
The list above demonstrates, though, that bullet points can help to solve the problem of worrying about whether an Oxford comma is required or not because each new line, each bullet point, separates each item. However, bullet points are only appropriate in certain types of writing and not others. They are unusual in fiction, for example.
Why I Mostly Don’t Use the Oxford Comma
*I’m an Australian writing in Australia.
*The Oxford comma is generally redundant in a simple list because the “and” or the “or” serves the same function of separating the last two items.
*If there’s doubt because of the inclusion or the lack of an Oxford comma, then I rewrite the sentence so that its meaning is clear.
*The Oxford comma only makes sense if you use it in a list of two as well and nobody uses it like this (nobody who has any idea of what they’re doing anyway).
The shoes were red, and shiny. (No)
The shoes were red and shiny. (Yes)
Why I Sometimes Use the Oxford Comma
*Where there are multiple “ands” or “ors”, it needs to be clear which words are being grouped together.
Duties include menu preparation, cooking and serving food, and clean-up.
Why Not Using the Oxford Comma Can Sometimes Get You into Trouble
In 2014, the O’Connor v Oakhurst Dairy lawsuit was filed in the US state of Maine to interpret a statute under which wages for the “canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution” of certain goods were exempted from the requirement to pay workers overtime. “For want of a comma, we have this case,” commented US appeals judge David J Barron.
The disagreement occurred over whether the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution” meant packing for shipment and packing for distribution (essentially packing only) or if it meant packing for shipment and then, completely separate to that, distributing the goods. Why did it matter? Well, there were $13 million reasons why. If distribution was included, the dairy could keep their money. If distribution wasn’t included, then truck drivers were owed $13 million in additional wages.
The lack of the Oxford comma seemed to suggest a certain meaning and the lack of the conjunction “or” before the word “packing” seemed to suggest another. A clear cut case of ambiguity. A lower court ruled one way, in favour of the dairy, and then on appeal, a circuit court ruled the other, in favour of the drivers.
Eventually, the case was settled when Oakhurst Dairy paid the truck drivers $5 million (better than the original $13 million they could have been out of pocket but no doubt still paid begrudgingly) and the intended meaning of the statute was settled when the Maine legislature amended it to include serial semicolons (which everyone knows are far more definitive than just commas) as well as replacing the word “distribution” with “distributing”. It now reads, “canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing.”
The fact that “distribution” was replaced with “distributing” goes to show that it wasn’t just the punctuation that contributed to the lack of clarity. All editors know that lists must be written with identical opening word suffixes (where they exist in the same format) so that it flows; for example, all infinitives or all –ing words or all nouns as below. The fact that the statute originally used “distribution” meant that it no longer flowed with all the other –ing words and could more easily be read as belonging with “shipment” and modifying the “packing” rather than being a separate item in the list.
Preserve
Preserving
Preservation
Store
Storing
Storage
Distribute
Distributing
Distribution
At the time, of the fifty US states, forty-three mandated use of the Oxford comma and both the House of Representatives and the Senate, whilst not going that far, did warn against leaving it out, for precisely the reasons described above; in their words, “to prevent any misreading that the last item is part of the preceding one”.
What Should You Do?
It’s probably best to follow the crowd on this one if you want to avoid having punctuation pedants contact you to tell you what you’re doing wrong every time you publish a piece of writing. If you’re writing in the US, use it. If you’re in Australia, Canada, New Zealand or the UK, or writing in any of the languages outlined in the long list above, don’t use it unless it is necessary to avoid ambiguity.
And don’t worry about getting it right on the first go. After all, the last stage of editing – most writers will be able to tell you this – is all about commas; putting them in, taking them out, putting them in again and then taking them out (and then putting them back in one last time) over several last draft read throughs. The best part about reaching this stage? You know you’re nearly ready to finish this piece of writing and begin working on the next.
