Commas are an essential piece of punctuation for dividing up sentences and making them easier to comprehend and read. However, the Oxford comma has always been the estranged relative of the comma family – some people swear by it while others excise it as if it were an inflamed appendix. Is the Oxford comma worth using or is it unnecessary? Join Wordsmith and let’s find out!
What (or when) is it good for?
Everyone knows that commas are used to separate phrases and clauses, or divide items on lists. Here’s how a regular sentence with a list of subjects and objects might appear:
1. Jon went on vacation in Rome with his parents, brother and sister.
2. In my beach basket, there were sandwiches, lemonade and sunscreen.
Some sticklers might point out that the sentences are unclear because of the comma arrangement. In example 1, are Jon’s parent’s named “brother and sister"? In example 2, is there sunscreen mixed into the lemonade? You might roll your eyes and think “obviously not”, but if these people are your higher ups and your customers, then you are technically obligated to clear up any misunderstandings (no matter how ridiculous they may be).
In such cases, the Oxford comma would make it abundantly clear that the items, are in fact, separate – like so:
1. Jon went on vacation in Rome with his parents, brother[,] and sister.
2. In my basket to the beach, there were sandwiches, lemonade[,] and sunscreen.
The Oxford comma caused a huge stir back in 2018, where a Maine dairy company was successfully sued for US$5 million due to unclear overtime rules for the drivers. The sentence under dispute was as follows:
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of…”
The controversy stemmed from “packing for shipment or distribution of”, where the two parties argued over whether packing for shipment or distribution were individual or separate tasks. The judge presiding over the case determined the wording to be unclear and ruled in favour of the drivers, thus ordering the company to shell out unpaid overtime wages for the plaintiffs and all other affected drivers. So yes, Oxford commas (or the lack thereof) can indeed be a big cause of concern when large stakes are involved! Does this mean that we should adopt the Oxford comma and that the sticklers’ decrees are absolute?
But is it necessary?
While Oxford commas do make lists clearer, we copywriters believe that there is always more than one way to handle a problems. Through clever writing, we can avoid these disputes altogether.
Instead of relying on commas only, we can use extra words to break up the items or even rearrange the sentences, like so:
1. Jon went on vacation in Rome with his parents – his brother and sister tagged along too.
2. In my basket to the beach, I brought sandwiches and lemonade for lunch and sunscreen for my tan.
As for the Maine debacle, here’s a simple fix if the corporates wanted to keep the list in that specific order:
· “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment [and/]or distribution of…”
There’s definitely merit to the Oxford comma, and whether you use it or not is up to personal preference (or your business’s styling guide). However, to say that it is the only way to write is lazy – a genuine copywriter can eliminate ambiguity and also convey the same meaning across many ways!