Team Oxford Comma

What is the Oxford comma?

Depending on who you ask, a person will likely feel one of the following ways about the Oxford comma: Very passionately in favor of using it, very against it, or indifferent (who cares about commas that much, right?). I fall into the category of very passionately in favor of. Let me make my case for why the Oxford comma is the way to go.

Let’s start with what the Oxford comma is. Also known as the serial comma or the Harvard comma, it is a comma that comes before the final conjunction (the word and or the word or) in a list of three or more things.

For example:

I love my parents, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts.

The Oxford comma in this sentence is the comma after Brad Pitt and before the final conjunction.

As you can see, without the use of the Oxford comma in this sentence, it would’ve been very unclear:

I love my parents, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts.

Are Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts my parents? Of course not. Could someone reasonably come to this conclusion? Sure. But with the use of the Oxford comma, we eliminate any possibility of ambiguity or lack of clarity.

That one time the lack of an Oxford comma cost a company $5 million

You may think I’m being dramatic about using the Oxford comma, but it literally could cost you if your sentence is unclear, like it did for a dairy company in Maine in 2018. Thanks to the lack of the Oxford comma in one of Maine’s labor laws, three truck drivers were able to sue their dairy company—and won!

The law had stated that workers were required to be paid time-and-a-half pay for each hour worked after 40 hours, but it listed exemptions for the following: The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution.

Do you see the lack of comma before that final conjunction there?

The court ruled that it was not clear whether the law exempted the distribution of the three categories that followed, or if it exempted packing for the shipment or distribution of them.

According to the New York Times, “The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the missing comma created enough uncertainty to side with the drivers, granting those who love the Oxford comma a chance to run a victory lap across the internet…Had there been a comma after ‘shipment,’ the meaning would have been clear.”

I bet those workers were very thankful for the lack of a simple comma in this situation!

Conclusion

Generally speaking, less is more. As an editor, I’m always looking for any unnecessary punctuation, filler words, or sentences. However, in the case of the Oxford comma, “excess” is thrown out the window because the clarity that is provided with the usage of the Oxford comma will always trump what some deem to be excessive.

If you fall into the third group of people I mentioned above, those indifferent to the Oxford comma (and any other punctuation for that matter), my biggest piece of advice is simply to be consistent in your writing. You can’t use the Oxford comma in some parts of your manuscript but leave it out in others. As your editor, part of my job is to ensure consistency and clarity. I will make note of things like this to make sure you pick one way and stick with it. While I’m clearly partial to the Oxford comma, I won’t judge you if you choose not to use it—well, not too much ;)

Thanks for reading! Check back in for more grammar and writing tips in the future!

Pippi Post