Underestimate the Oxford Comma at Your Peril

(Source: Warren Clements @ The Globe and Mail, July 16^th, Print Edition)

It's official. People care about the Oxford comma. Last week's column, in which I gave each side its best arguments and observed that I seldom use the Oxford comma, provoked an avalanche of responses. They were either smart, passionate and heartfelt or smart, passionate, and heartfelt.

To recap, the Oxford (or serial) comma is the comma that precedes the concluding “and” or “or” in a list of more than two elements: apples, peaches, and pears. Many people use the comma all the time to avoid any chance of ambiguity. In the Globe and Mail's impromptu online poll this week, 65 per cent of respondents (5,491 votes) said they used the Oxford comma, 24 per cent said they didn't, and 11 per cent said they didn't care.

A few readers referred to the catchy 2008 song Oxford Comma by the pop group Vampire Weekend. The opening line, which I have taken the liberty of bowdlerizing, is: “Who gives a [hoot] about an Oxford comma?” But the target was less the comma itself than it was people with pretensions, “all your diction dripping with disdain.” I couldn't help noticing that the CD's iliner notes made liberal use of the Oxford comma: “The Dirty Projectors, Ra Ra Riot, Yacht, Sam Rosen, and Nat Baldwin.” Someone clearly gave a hoot.

Sine the Oxford comma derived its name from a rule issued in 1893 at the University Press in Oxford, one might assume that the British are particularly keen on it. Lynnne Truss says otherwise in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, her bestseller about punctuation.

“In Britain, where standard usage is to leave it out, there are those who put it in including, interestingly, Fowler's Modern English Usage. In America, conversely, where standard usage is to leave it in, there are those who make a point of removing it (especially journalists).”

Truss says she uses the Oxford comma sparingly, but when she feels like using it she fights for it. When her editor sought to remove the serial comma from a statement that punctuation marks “tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop,” Truss “argued for that Oxford comma. It seemed to me that without the comma after 'detour,' this was a list of three instructions (the last a double one), not four.”

This is the whimsical treatment that drives proponents of the Oxford comma wild. Be consistent, they say. An online comment this week on The Globe's website from “Recti” said: “Yes, it [the serial comma] sometimes impedes easy reading where the meaning of a list is understood from context and the comma is optional for understanding. However, literate people often get over that uneasy feeling and are comfortable with the certainties afforded by the serial comma.”

Truss's book finesses the argument by using an ampersand in its title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves. But the motive has nothing to do with preventing a dust-up and everything to do with the joke from which the title was drawn.

That's why a panda is seen on the cover erasing the comma after “eats”; the punchline depends upon ambiguity. In the joke, a panda with a fun in a bar ears, shoots (someone) and leaves. When the bartenders consults the dictionary, he reads: Panda. Native to China. Eats shoots and leaves.”

Readers' responses were similarly full of puns. “I can't stand these leftist Oxford commanists!” wrote online contributor “Skinny Dipper.” Bob McGowan winced at last week's reference to :the comma before the storm.” He wrote: “Surely this is a misprint. Please confirm that it is. For you to say that you must have been in a comma when you wrote it is not an acceptable answer.”

All I can say is that, when asked how I feel about my inconsistent usage, I reply, “Comma ci, comma ca”.

Separatives, Connectives (,) and the Oxford Comma

Source: (Warren Clement @ The Globe and Mail (Newspaper! Old school, yo!), July 9^th, 2011)

When linking three or more elements, some writers place a comma before the “and”: bell, book, and candle. That's known as the Oxford comma (or serial comma). Other writers don't use that comma: bell, book and cadle.

Wars have been fought over less.

The Oxford comma got its name because Horace Hart, controller of the University Press at Oxford in 1893, compiled a set of rules for use by press employees. It began as a single page, and by 1904 was big enough to be published as a book: Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers. An updated version, New Hart's Rules, appeared in 2002.

Imagine the kerfuffle, then, when Galleycat, a division of the U.S. Website mediabistro.com, relayed a tweet last week implying that the Oxford University Press would discard the Oxford comma as of June 30. Bell, book and candle would prevail. Fans of the comma rent their garments and muttered about heresy.

It turned out to have been a misunderstanding. It was Oxford University's public affairs department, and not the OUP, that had decided to stop using the Oxford comma. The OUP said it had no intention of disowning the comma. Peace was restored.

Many will wonder what the fuss was about. The answer concerns the clarity of a sentence. As Lynne Truss proved with her massive bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which was at the heart about the accurate place of commas and apostrophes, a lot of people care about such things. I'm one of them. To judge by the mail, many of this column's readers are, too.

Most newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, shun the Oxford comma, a decision apparently made originally to save space. For me, the habit is so entrenched and the sensitivity so ingrained that encountering the Oxford comma in “apples, peaches, and pears” is like stumbling over a hoe. The comma delays me as a reader when I see no reason to be delayed. Wilson Follet makes the point in Modern American Usage that the comma is not redundant – it's a “separative” device, while the conjuction “and” is connective – yet it trips me up all the same. I invoke Keith Waterhouse in Waterhouse on Newspaper Style: “Commas are not condiments. Do not pepper sentences with them unnecessarily.”

But most grammatical guide-books (hello, Strunk and White; hellow, Fowler) prefer the Oxford comma because it has consistency on its side.

Those who favour the Oxford comma use it all the time.

Those who resist the Oxford comma must nonetheless use it on many occasions to avoid ambiguity or ensure clarity. For instance, the comma helps if a list has more than one “and”: He spoke of Jack and Jill, William and Mary, and Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

In Garner's Modern American Usage, Bryan A. Garner goes so far as to say the argument is “easily answered in favour of inclusion because omitting the final comma may cause ambiguities, whereas including it never will...”

Not so. Consider this sentence: She invited her father, a tuba player and several ballerinas. It is clear that she invited her father, the musicians and the ballerinas. Now insert the Oxford comma: She invited her father, a tuba player, and several ballerinas. Suddenly the father has become a tuba player.

But I cherry-picked that example. For the most part, Garner is right. The Oxford comma would certainly improve this sentence: He played two madrigals, Stairway to Heaven and Smoke on the Water. The question is whether you trust yourself to use the serial comma only when necessary or whether you prefer to use it consistently for your sake and quite possibly the reader's.

In that respect, newspaper writers live dangerously. I throw caution to the wind, laugh in the face of doom and deny employment to the Oxford comma.

I shall pay one day for my recklessness. It will be comma karma. For now, it's the comma before the storm.

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I may have asked this before dear readers, but where do you stand on the Oxford comma issue? Given my tendency to overuse the comma, I generally avoid it when I can in order to keep my comma count down. How about you?