Oxford Comma

[gratia]

What is the oxford comma and why do we use it?

[Heracles]

Well, I had heard of Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. I had also heard of colons, semicolons, and commas.

But I had never heard of Oxford commas. So I googled it.

[Mangetout]

It’s a comma that appears in a list before '…and the last item".

The classic example:

“I’d like to thank my parents, Barney the dinosaur and Donald Trump” - sounds like I’m claiming those people as my parents; the Oxford comma is inserted before the last item and it becomes:

“I’d like to thank my parents, Barney the dinosaur**,** and Donald Trump” - which is meant to be easier to intepret as a list.

[njtt]

IIRC it is not recommended by the Oxford University Press style guide, but it is recommended by many American style guides.

[Learjeff]

I remember being taught in grade school that the last comma is optional, but that seemed illogical to me. The example above shows why it really shouldn’t be considered optional, though in most cases the meaning isn’t ambiguous.

[GuanoLad]

A lack of comma ties two list items together. Sometimes that’s appropriate, but most of the time it won’t be. I am a stickler for the Oxford (or Serial) Comma. I believe I am in the minority.

[Dewey_Finn]

It’s a song by Vampire Weekend.

[Northern_Piper]

Tom Kane of Boss despises the Oxford Comma.

[Marconi_N.Cheese]

I use it too. It just seems logical to me. Maybe it’s a throwback to my old programming days, but I see “and” as a concatenation operator. Can’t help it.

[moriah]

The usual suspects against the serial (Oxford) comma are those associated with printing because of an atavistic compulsion to save space. The space that a comma takes. Even at the risk of clarity.

[TriPolar]

You can use punctuation to clarify or obfuscate your intent. The Oxford comma clarifies. Lazily removing a comma based on some illogical concept of style doesn’t. But think of all the toner you save.

[Knorf]

@njtt

IIRC it is not recommended by the Oxford University Press style guide, but it is recommended by many American style guides.

This is incorrect. It IS recommended by the Oxford University Press style manual.

For a century it has been part of OUP style to retain or impose this last serial (or series) comma consistently, … but it is commonly used by many other publishers both here and abroad, and forms a routine part of style in US and Canadian English… Given that the final comma is sometimes necessary to prevent ambiguity, it is logical to impose it uniformly, so as to obviate the need to pause and gauge each enumeration on the likelihood of its being misunderstood – especially since that likelihood is often more obvious to the reader than the writer. (pp. 121–122)

Also recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage: A Guide, and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, among others.

It is chiefly newspaper guides that oppose it, for space reasons. Commas take a lot of space. Your average page might have 3-4 extra commas if newspapers used the Oxford comma. Imagine the expense! It would bring the newspaper industry to its knees.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Knorf

This is incorrect. It IS recommended by the Oxford University Press style manual.
Also recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage: A Guide, and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, among others.

Heck with them. It’s recommended by ME! That should be enough for anyone.

[Little_Nemo]

@moriah

The usual suspects against the serial (Oxford) comma are those associated with printing because of an atavistic compulsion to save space. The space that a comma takes. Even at the risk of clarity.

Agreed. The only place the omission of the comma makes sense is in newspaper headlines due to space limitations. But there’s no reason why the rest of us have to follow newspaper guidelines.

Or, to put it more succintly:

NEMO SEZ: KEEP COMMA

[SmartAlecCat]

<ob cartoon>http://i.imgur.com/5LdZT.jpg</ob cartoon>
With the oxford comma: we invited the strippers, jfk, and stalin.
Without the oxford comma: we invited the strippers, jfk and stalin.

[thelurkinghorror]

But newspapers also love commas as a replacement for “and”. As in “EXTRA: Commas useful, classy.”

@Exapno_Mapcase

Heck with them. It’s recommended by ME! That should be enough for anyone.

Good enough. But hmm… Strunk and White? Poisoned by association.

Wikipedia gives 4 reasons why Oxford comma might be a bad idea. 3 of those reasons amount to “I have to pay by the comma and it’s a lot of effort to push a single key anyway.” The other reason is that the sentence “To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God” is better without the comma. IMHO, 99/100 times, the comma is better and that’s why I use it. Commaless also looks “wrong.”

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@thelurkinghorror

Good enough. But hmm… Strunk and White? Poisoned by association.

I’ve never understood the reflexive hatred for Strunk and White. It’s intended for an audience who wants rules they can apply and for whom rules would make their writing better in every way. It works extremely well for its designed purpose.

I’m much more upset by the old-fashioned usage guides. A lot of Fowler goes back to the original 1920s edition. Things are said in them that were insane 40 years ago when I first saw them and from another planet today. At best you can point out that even back in prehistory they were saying that you could end a sentence with a proposition. I wouldn’t touch them at all today. If I had to make the choice I would rip Fowler out of your hands and substitute Lynn Truss.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

The more common term I’ve heard is terminal comma, as opposed to the other commas in a list, called serial commas. My rule is to omit terminal commas when they have no effect on the sentence but leave them in if anything about the sentence construction or word order is awkward without it.

[skdo23]

I can tell you from personal experience that, if you ever get a job as a summer associate at a law firm, devoting several hundred dollars worth of billable time to adding serial commas to boilerplate documents will not impress the higher-ups.

[Polycarp]

I would say there are three rules to follow here:

1. Use the style required or recommended by your publisher, academic authority, or other person who for good and sufficient reason you have given some degree of authority over your writing.

2. Be consistent in applying whichever style you opt for.

3. The majority of the time, presuming rule #1 does not control, it will not matter which you opt for. But if omitting the Oxford/serial comma in a given written piece will result in undesired ambiguity, then be sure to use it.