An alert reader brought this piece from The Economist to my attention. An excerpt:
To recap, the Oxford comma separates the last two items in a list, as in “red, white, and blue”. For reasons opaque, the use or non-use of the final comma here stirs passions all out of proportion to its importance. As OnlineSchools.com’s graphic notes, much of the world uses it, but equally respectable publishing houses and publications do not. The Economist is in the latter camp: we would write “red, white and blue”. Defenders of the Oxford comma point to an almost certainly apocryphal story of the student who dedicated a piece of work to “my parents, God and Ayn Rand”. But anyone who writes such a thing has bigger problems than punctuation. Any sensible person would edit and remove such messes as this, whether they use the Oxford comma or not.
What I like about OnlineSchools.com’s graphic is its explanation that the Oxford comma isn’t a black-or-white, always-or-never thing. It is a matter of style. Use it or don’t, but be consistent, and you’re fine. Rarely is such finesse on display when people talk about these things…
What that sort of implies, but doesn’t clearly say, is that even someone who does not use the Oxford comma as a rule might use it, without being untrue to himself, in a series of elements that are more complex than red, white and blue. For instance, if he were to describe the same colors as the hue of an apple at the perfect point of ripeness, that of a face that has been drained of blood at the moment when its owner has heard appalling news, and the color that you see staring straight down into the Pacific when you’re out of sight of land.
No one should be so rigid about this or any other style rule that it gets in the way of clear communication.
Of course, just plain “red, white and blue” would be the more economical way to say it.
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Obviously the Oxford comma (or Harvard comma if your American) is an English thing and completely stylistic in form. It only makes it slightly easier for the reader to know when the list ends. When writing in German leaving out the last comma is correct punctuation. I don’t think many Continental European languages use that form of punctuation. Add it to the list of Anglophone peculiarities.
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
“Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“Well, I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
Moral of the Story: Use the Oxford Comma. The life you save could be your own.
Actually, the famous Panda example doesn’t support the Oxford comma. The problem isn’t the lack of a comma in a series, but the presence of one that shouldn’t be there.
But I think what you mean to say is, we must all be careful to use commas properly.
Actually, you’re right. I stand corrected.
“even someone who does not use the Oxford comma as a rule might use it, without being untrue to himself”
That phrase right there brightened up an otherwise tedious day of technical work.
The key part of the sentence was “as a rule.”
But I realize it wasn’t as clear as it should be. How about, “even someone whose style is not to use the Oxford comma might make an exception, without being untrue to himself…”
Still not elegant, is it?
It was the idea that my choice of how to punctuate reflects on my very being that made me smile. (And I’m not being sarcastic — I thought it was a lovely turn of phrase).
By the way, I only recently learned that it was called the Oxford comma. I had always associated it with Strunk and White.
I just associate it with a Vampire Weekend song. But now that I know what it is, I know that I was taught to use it, and probably because of that, to not have it just seems very very wrong. It seems like a parenthetical phrase where someone accidentally left off the closing bracket or a musical phrase that is unresolved. It just seems wrong. And also less clear. Granted, nine times out of ten, the meaning would be clear either way, but still it is just reassuring to have the delineation. I had no idea I felt so solidly about this. But I do.
<——"An alert reader."
Yes, that would be you, T.J.
The book by Strunk and White continues to be my model as well. I teach the Oxford comma for clarity.