What the comma debate can teach us
Ihave probably spent more time than anyone else on the planet talking to strangers about the Oxford comma. As the proprietor of a traveling pop-up grammar advice stand called the Grammar Table, I sit on the street and answer questions from passersby. I’ve done that in 49 states, and there is no topic I am approached about more than this one.
“Oxford comma, yes or no?” “Oxford comma or bust!”
“Oh my God, I had somebody call me a coastal elite because I was talking about the Oxford comma!” a woman told me in North Dakota.
In case this term is unfamiliar to you, it is the comma you see right before the “and” at the end of a list, as in “A priest, a nun, and a sloth walked slowly into a bar.”
People have crushes on this comma. You’ll see them wearing Oxford comma T-shirts, carrying Oxford comma mugs, and proclaiming Oxford comma love in carefully punctuated online dating profiles.
This wee piece of punctuation, often indistinguishable from a fleck of dirt on a computer screen, is one of the emotional hot-button issues of our time. One way to enrage co-workers is to undo their Oxford comma decisions when they’re not looking.
But how much does the Oxford comma really matter? My answer, most of the time, is not that much. “I had eggs, toast and orange juice” means exactly the same thing as “I had eggs, toast, and orange juice.” And before you start writing a letter to the editor, I do currently use the Oxford comma. But I haven’t always, and The Chronicle doesn’t usually use it either.
Sometimes a list calls out for a nice crisp Oxford comma, also known as a serial comma, to define a messy or ambiguous boundary between the second-to-last item and the last item. “I ordered salad, macaroni and cheese and an ice cream sundae” is harder to read than “I ordered salad, macaroni and cheese, and an ice cream sundae.”
Instead of politely permitting that comma, though, adamant Oxford opponents are sometimes comma-averse to the point of comedy. They may change the macaroni’s “and” to an ampersand or replace it with “with.” But it is not “macaroni & cheese” nor, in my macaroni world at least, is it “macaroni with cheese.” Ralph Waldo Emerson warned, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Don’t be renaming my food because you are too stubborn to accept comma help when it is offered.
Plenty of people claim that the Associated Press Stylebook, which governs a lot of newspaper writing in the United States, forbids the Oxford comma, but that is a contemptible comma lie. “Put a comma before the concluding conjunction in a series if an integral element of the series requires a conjunction,” it says. There! Macaroni situation solved.
On the other side of this debate, ardent Oxford advocates often offer apocryphal arguments. In 2021, a Politico headline — “How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer from Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream” — caused comma consternation. A woman who jovially tweeted it with the comment “And always remember to use the Oxford comma, kids” initially got more than 76,000 likes.
In reality, the original headline was fine punctuationally speaking. Sure, it was a little hard to process, maybe partly because so many people who knew all about the politician Harry Reid didn’t know a thing about Blink-182, and vice versa. But adding an Oxford comma wouldn’t have helped. The original version was unambiguously three people, whereas “How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator, and the Singer from Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream” could also technically have been two, featuring Reid as the terrorist interrogator. Indeed, some confused respondents thought that was the intention.
Other Twitter punctuators complained that the original meant Harry Reid was both a terrorist interrogator and the singer from Blink-182. That’s not true though, because that would have required a comma after Blink-182, and there wasn’t one. I explained all of this in a carefully crafted 428-word response that got 1/76 of the likes on the original tweet.
One thing I have learned is that when people bother to ask me about the Oxford comma, they usually want to keep it close. A man I met on a hot day in downtown Salt Lake City was an exception. I was sitting at the Grammar Table when he approached and told me that Oxford commas had been a source of friction between him and a friend.
“My friend didn’t want them,” he said.
“Yes, people can get very upset about the Oxford comma,” I replied. “Do you use them?”
“Well, my friend and I were having a knock-down, drag-out fight about this, so I did some research,” he said. “And I was right: either way is fine. She was not open to the idea that both were acceptable. That fight has served me well, though, because every time I argue with her, every time we come to an impasse, I say to her, ‘Remember the comma!’ ”
“I approve of your open-mindedness about the Oxford comma,” I told him.
I meant it, too. Perhaps this man could be a model of moderation for us all. Fighting over chores? A fence? Politics? Remember the comma!