How to Look Super Smart the Next Time Someone Mentions an Oxford Comma
Just know, it's right either way.
When people find out that you write for a living (and by “people” I mean “strangers at crowded parties who are standing between you and either your friends, the bar, or both”) they like to ask how you feel about the Oxford comma.
How do I, a professional writer, feel about the Oxford comma? I do not think it is a necessary punctuation mark. I think most sentences where you would use it can be rewritten to eliminate the need for one.
But I think it makes writing much clearer, and I’m all in favor of anything that makes writing more clear.
Now, if you are not a professional writer and people don’t make small talk with you about punctuation marks, you might not be super clear on what, exactly, the Oxford comma really is. And that’s ok, because there are professional writers to deal with it.
The Oxford comma is the final comma placed in a list of things. For this reason, it is also known as the serial comma.
Picture your most recent grocery list. If you’re me, that looked something like realizing on a Sunday night that your kid had three half days of school this week, there would be no hot lunch served on said half days, and you had to make him lunch but because you never make him lunch you have no lunch-making supplies other than peanut butter which you can’t give him because school is a Nut-Free Zone and you will not be responsible for anaphylaxis.
Thusly:
I need Sun Butter, bread, and fruit from Instacart, stat.
That comma between bread and and? That’s your Oxford comma. Yes, that’s all it is.
If you were, say, dictating that list to someone in another room, you would speak as though there were a comma between bread and and. The Oxford comma replicates spoken-word rhythm more closely.
It is also more precise. While the above sentence, er, grocery list, does not really lose much in translation if you pull the Oxford comma, other series fare less well.
Someone texts you about your favorite rides at an amusement park. “I like thrill rides, the merry-go-round and the antique cars,” you write. “Are you 90?” your friend responds, because your lack of serial comma makes it sound like you think riding a horse in a circle or driving a car that goes 2 mph is a "thrill ride.
You might clarify, “I like the thrill rides, the merry-go-round, and the antique cars.”
One could make the case that the conjunction “and” provides the same separation in a list that the Oxford comma does, and one would be right. But the comma looks nicer in writing, and makes the meaning of your sentence perfectly clear.
At many newspapers and magazines, style guides ask writers to eliminate Oxford commas. This was because once upon a time when newspapers existed only in print and you had to walk uphill both ways to school barefoot in the snow, not using the comma saved space on the page. Now everything’s online and space-saving is no longer as much of a concern, but the custom remains.
So, grammatically sound with or without the Oxford comma, but in most settings, adding one in will make your writing look more polished.
I cannot handle putting a comma in front of "and."
Something bad would happen.