The Over-Looked Oxford Comma

 

As I mindlessly scrolled through YouTube this week, I came across a ted-talk about what seemed like a rather boring topic, which I would otherwise have no interest in. Fortunately for me, my boredom had peaked, and this week’s blog post is based on the interesting, yet probably useless information I learned. The Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is a punctuation mark which has been at the centre of controversy between grammar enthusiasts, writers, editors, and others alike for many years. If that doesn’t reel you in, I don’t know what will so without further ado, let’s delve into this interesting facet of the English language.

The Oxford comma is the comma used before the conjunction “and” or “or” in a list of three or more items. An example of this can be found in the sentence “I need to buy apples, oranges, and bananas.” In this scenario the Oxford comma is present after “oranges” and before “and”. Without the comma, the sentence would read “I need to buy apples, oranges and bananas”. In this scenario, the absence of the comma doesn’t create confusion however there are situations were leaving the comma out can give sentences have unintended meaning and this is where the debate arises. 

Take the sentence “We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin”. Without the Oxford comma the sentence would have you believe that JFK and Stalin are the names of the strippers when in reality you invited strippers and JFK and Stalin. This may seem like it doesn’t matter and that’s because it actually probably doesn’t because in most situations the “and” or “or” does the separating for us however it still is rather interesting that there are scenarios where a single comma can completely change the interpretation of a sentence.

The Oxford comma dates back all the way to the early days of printing. The Oxford University Press style guide has advocated for its use and hence the name “Oxford comma”. The comma isn’t common practice everywhere and is deemed as optional. A grammatical rule being deemed as “optional” is very out of the ordinary however it appropriately represents the Oxford comma, which is just an odd grammatical rule.

Where does this leave us? What have we learnt? In truth we have likely learnt nothing and depending on how fast you read, you may think I have wasted about three minutes of your time. That may be true and I may have wasted a half hour writing about a grammatical rule no one cares about but at least the next time you text someone you may be more away of the life changing impact the humble and often overlooked comma possesses in our daily lives.