To Oxford Comma or Not?

Forget ISIS, Global Warming, North Korea’s nuclear program and the imminent extinction of the polar bear, the gravest danger facing the world today is none other than the Oxford comma.

For all of you who aren’t English nerds, the Oxford comma is a punctuation mark that separates articles in a list (as well as a fun song by Vampire Weekend). Let’s see this puppy in action:

While Sean was waiting for Kyle to pick up Chinese for dinner, he scraped the paint off the door frame, alphabetized his books by main character’s first name, and successfully startled the neighbor’s boxer twice. (Sentence courtesy of thewritepractice.com)

First off, wow, Sean really has some obsessive compulsive tendencies. No wonder Kyle went to go pick up the food – I bet they don’t even let Sean drive anymore. All humor aside, the last comma in that sentence is an Oxford comma, also known as a serial comma or a Harvard comma. Doesn’t it sound pretentious?

Is the Oxford comma required?

No! For years, English experts have been debating the usage of the Oxford comma. MLA, APA and the US Government Printing Office strongly recommend its use, while the Associated Press recommends its omission. Those in favor argue it adds clarity and helps to separate a long list. Those opposed argue it clutters the sentence, throwing an unnecessary punctuation mark where it really doesn’t belong.

I grew up on the age-old wisdom of Strunk & White: Stick to the hard-set rules and you’ll never run amuck. Then, in 6th grade, like a new color being added to the rainbow, my eyes were opened to a new way to see the comma: If in doubt, leave it out.

This baffled me. Should I use the Oxford comma or not? What does the Oxford comma say about my personality, our society and our species? How can a rule be optional? If it rhymes, does that make it true? Man, these were some heavy questions.

I turned to Perficient’s copywriting department for clues. I hoped for a clear, straightforward answer. Instead, they raised a new question: Do you care if your peas and carrots touch or do you need everything on your ZooPals plate separate?

In the spirit of protest (isn’t it nice to be 20?), I’ll start by arguing against the Oxford comma. The great Cormac McCarthy stands firm against the comma with his beautiful, run-on sentences:

They dumped out the wooden coffeebox on the floor and kicked through his clothes and his shaving things and they turned the mattress over in the floor. They were dressed in greasy and blackened khaki uniforms and they smelled of sweat and woodsmoke.

Look! Not a single comma! This except comes from All the Pretty Horses (definitely a must-read!). Cormac doesn’t care about rules. He’s a free-spirit, a true cowboy – he does his own thing whether you like it or not.

See how beautifully that passage flows. No pauses, no breaks, just a wonderful, fluid description. McCarthy’s omission of the Oxford comma draws you into the scene, letting you feel the actions, making you a participant rather than an observer.

If that excerpt completely freaks you out, maybe you fall on the pro side of the debate. So for the sake of argument, I’ll lay down that side’s stance.

Omitting a comma can sometimes cause some strange misunderstandings, such as this news notification from 2013:

Or this sentence from my Pulitzer Prize acceptance speech (you know, just in case):

I’d like to thank my parents, Gandhi and Lady Gaga.

Without the Oxford comma, this sentence implies that I’m thanking my parents, who also happen to be Gandhi and Lady Gaga (which explains a lot). However, rewritten with an Oxford comma, the sentence looks like this:

I’d like to thank my parents, Gandhi, and Lady Gaga.

This whole issue could be resolved by rearranging the words in the sentence:

I’d like to thank Gandhi, Lady Gaga and my parents.

Now that you understand both sides of the argument, let’s take this whole comma conundrum one step further.

What the Oxford Comma Says About You

Now I’m no expert in Freudian psychology, but I think your use or omission of the Oxford comma says a lot about your personality.

In Joe Bunting’s thewritepractice.com article, he writes of the truth behind the Oxford comma:

If the Oxford comma is a prepster in chinos and a green LaCoste polo, I’m a hipster in a dirty flannel shirt and skinny jeans. If the Oxford comma is, in fact, Oxford, I’m the year you took off college to go chill with some Maasai in Kenya. If the Oxford comma is a MacBook Pro, I’m that manual typewriter you got at a yard sale that everyone sees and asks, “Is that a real typewriter? Can I try it?”

The Oxford comma is rigid, it’s specific, it demands to be seen. After all, aren’t commas all just weird squiggly lines that jam themselves inside sentences? If a period is a stop, then a comma is a breath. It’s the point in the sentence that shouts, “Pause. Reassess. Where are you now? What did you just read? Do you actually remember reading any of that? Does this even make sense to you?”

The Oxford Comma Personality Test

Let me ask you a few questions: When you take your clothes out of the dryer, do you fold them immediately or let them sit in the laundry bag and relax?

What does your desk look like at home? Is it cluttered or neatly organized?

Does your desktop have a bunch of folders with ultra-specific names or is crammed with documents filling every visible pixel?

You catch my drift.

The more organized, Type A personalities – the prepsters in their pressed khakis and neatly-tucked button down shirts – need the Oxford comma. To them it brings order to the sentence. They can’t imagine that lonely “and” without a squiggle before it. It would be blasphemy, chaos, anarchy to write without it.

The Hippie’s Omission

If you’re more of a free spirit, the type that can live and function in clutter, the adorable Corgi puppy that needs to roll around in the mud before going inside, maybe you don’t like the Oxford comma. The Cormac McCarthys of the world see it as an intrusion into their beautiful, free-flowing prose. To us wannabe-hippies, that alien comma is surrendering us to the Man. Society wants us to break up our series, society wants order, but we stand resilient! Forget commas, forget order, forget sense, we want anarchy, chaos, destruction (okay, maybe I’m taking this a little too far).

The takeaway here is whether you choose to use the Oxford comma or not, make sure your sentence makes sense. Always proofread so that people don’t think your parents are Gandhi and Lady Gaga (but wouldn’t that be cool?) You can omit it if you rearrange your sentence or use it if it makes you feel better. The one important thing here is consistency: if you use it, use it everywhere; if you don’t use it, don’t use it anywhere.

*Shoutouts to Mental Floss and TheWritePractice