I have a confession. I don’t care about the Oxford comma.
It’s OK with me if you want to use it. It’s also OK with me if you want to follow what I think of as the newspaper rule (because it’s in the AP stylebook) and only use it if the sentence would otherwise be confusing.
For those who are not of the writing or editing professions and who do not follow the heated debates about this issue on Twitter, the Oxford comma is the comma that appears just before “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items. It’s also called the serial comma.
Under the newspaper rule, you generally don’t put a comma there.
Here’s a sentence with the Oxford comma:
I like persimmons, strawberries, and grapefruit.
Here’s the same sentence without it:
I like persimmons, strawberries and grapefruit.
As far as I’m concerned, either version is fine. There’s no confusion either way.
Generally, the only sentences where you need to deliberately include or omit that comma are ones where the words divided by the “and” could be taken as describing the previous words.
So for example:
“I only go to the movies with my cousins, Dick, and Jane” does not mean the same thing as “I only go to the movies with my cousins, Dick and Jane.”
In the first sentence, “cousins,” “Dick,” and “Jane” are all separate categories. In the second, Dick and Jane are the names of my cousins.
If you mean the first, you need that final comma. If you mean the second, that final comma is wrong.
Actually, this rule isn’t really about commas. It’s about the fact that sometimes something that looks like a list isn’t. And if it’s not a list, then you need to use commas differently. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Commas and Rules”…