The Oxford Comma is Bullshit
There are exactly four things a “correctly” placed comma can do to a sentence:
- Improve clarity
- Increase ambiguity
- Have no effect on clarity; and
- Have no effect on ambiguity
I’ve put quotation marks around “correctly” because I would argue that using a comma in any way except #1 is technically incorrect, but I wanted to distinguish these placements from out-and-out incorrect placement arbitrarily in a sentence.
I’ll start at the end of the list and work backwards.
No Effect on Ambiguity
Consider this sentence: “I went to the shop with Jim, a chef and a metalsmith.”
Jim appears to have two professions. But I may have gone to the shop with three people: Jim, another person who’s a chef, and someone else that’s a metalsmith.
With the help of the Oxford comma: “I went to the shop with Jim, a chef, and a metalsmith.”
Now Jim is a chef, and the metalsmith appears to be someone else, but it’s still possible that I intended to say that I went to the shop with three different people.
So the Oxford comma is useless here.
No Effect on Clarity
Here’s a picture that I saw the other day, trying to defend the serial comma.
Fig 1. The stupidest fucking defence I’ve ever seen.
This is without a doubt the most moronic defence of this punctuation mark I’ve ever seen. Here’s how you can tell it’s stupid: go up to a friend today and tell them that you had eggs, toast and orange juice today for breakfast. They will not grab you by the shoulders and shake you, screaming, “HOW DID YOU CREATE THE UNHOLY CHIMERA OF TOAST AND ORANGE JUICE COMBINED,” I promise you.
It’s far more likely that they’ll call you a lucky bastard and say they only had time for a cup of coffee, what with traffic on the way to work being so bad these days and anyways eggs give them gas.
This use of the comma has precisely zero effect on the clarity of the sentence. If you wanted to indicate that you had some sort of juice-toast hybrid, you’d use a hyphen.
“This morning for breakfast, I had eggs and toast-juice. Or juice-toast. I dunno, I was pretty drunk.”
Here’s another image, which I’m including so people stop trying to use it to justify anything.
Fig 2. Only marginally less stupid than the first example, but more annoying
This image correctly indicates that placing a comma changes the meaning of the sentence, so it is slightly less asinine. But both sentences are correct; the second one is not any less grammatically valid than the first.
The problem is that, absent of context, NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY FUCKING SENSE. Since the creator is obviously trying to defend the Oxford comma, the implication is that inviting two strippers, an assassinated President and a dead fucking mass murderer to your party is LESS OUTRAGEOUS than inviting two strippers who have stage names of a famous playboy and a guy whose name translates to “Man of Steel”. Are you fucking kidding me?
In the absence of clarifying context—say, whether this is a line from a zombie novel or something—the only reasonable interpretation that I can make is that the strippers ARE named JFK and Stalin. Either that, or I’m going to the wrong fucking parties.
Either way, stop promulgating this bullshit.
Introducing Ambiguity
The Oxford comma, like any other comma, can introduce ambiguity into a situation. To wit:
“I went to the party with Irene, my best friend, and a six pack of beer.”
Versus
“I went to the party with Irene, my best friend and a six pack of beer.”
The first sentence is unclear because we don’t know if Irene and my best friend are the same person or different people. The Oxford comma has put “my best friend” into apposition with “Irene”.
Fig 3. This schlock as my best friend? I think not.
The second sentence is more clear, because you’d have to believe that Irene was both my best friend AND a six pack of beer, which is hugely unlikely. If I made friends with inanimate containers of alcohol, obviously my best friend would be a bottle of vodka.
Adding Clarity
Okay, this is the last case, and after I’ve spent the rest of the time beating up on the Oxford comma, we come to the point where I admit that it can make a sentence clearer. In fact, since we all agree that this is possible, I’m not even going to come up with an example.
But now we’re left with the situation where out of four possible use cases, the Oxford comma either does nothing at all or makes things worse in three of them. You could, conversely, argue that the Oxford comma does nothing or makes things BETTER in three cases, except that that runs counter to the notion that one should use as little punctuation as needed in a sentence to make things clear, but no more than that. This is why in literature, you never see four question marks to indicate incredulity, or six exclamation marks to really, REALLY show that someone is excited. (No, furry slash fiction doesn’t count as “literature”.)
Using the Oxford comma as a matter of style is as pointless as using two spaces after a period. It brings no grammatical utility, but a bunch of us were taught to do it by rote by teachers who only had the vaguest understanding of why they were teaching us these things.
If you use the so-called Oxford comma, use it because that’s where a comma goes to make things clear, the same as ANY OTHER COMMA. It really doesn’t deserve its own term or notation, because it’s not doing anything different.
And if your sentences are delivered without context and they suffer from some sort of problem where people can’t tell what the fuck you’re talking about, re-write the fucking sentence or give some edifying information before or after. Shoehorning in a bunch of commas isn’t the way to solve problems with your grammar and diction. Just how lazy are you?
Ahem.
“It brings no grammatical utility, but a bunch of us were taught to do it by rote by teachers that only had the vaguest understanding of why they were teaching us these things.” Teachers are people, I _think_ you should have used “who” instead of “that”.
“It really doesn’t deserve it’s own term or notation, because it’s not doing anything different.” You misused the apostrophe in the fifth word.
I am sure there is a law that states I have made a grammatical mistake in this comment.
You are certainly correct when you state that the Oxford comma can add ambiguity. In those cases, it should not be used. In my experience, these cases are rare. Far more often, I find the lack of an Oxford comma adds to ambiguity.
I love the Oxford comma. I love the comma, generally. I think we should use commas more frequently in writing. I think of them like I think of whitespace; they are a key to aesthetic design of the written word. They help break up a sentence, making the sentence easier to parse.
You are obviously a communist who prefers orange juice on toast.
Fixed those two errors. Thanks.
I always miss the “who/that” issue.
As for the comma, it’s (now) a specific grammatical construct with a distinct purpose. Commas separate clauses and list items. The notion that we should use it to break up a sentence for aesthetic reasons is very old, but at this point, very outdated. The ellipsis is more appropriate if you want to insert pauses into your sentence to reflect some sort of change in cadence or whatnot, I believe.
Moreover, my real point is that a comma should be used to clarify a situation, but it shouldn’t be used by rote. If it adds clarity, use it. If not, leave it out. You should be reading your sentences as you write them, which sounds asinine, but I get the impression that a lot of people don’t, and that’s why we end up with commas randomly strewn about, or not used when they should be. As such, the ‘Oxford’ comma doesn’t deserve a name. It’s just a comma.
Fucking Pinko Commanists.
I actually agree with much of your commentary; however, I think that the underlying assumption that you make is wrongheaded. This is the assumption that leads to the sweeping statement and title of your blog: the Oxford comma is bullshit. The Oxford comma, just like any other mark of punctuation, is only useful or helpful in so far as it is a tool so it really depends on the writer’s ability to deploy it appropriately.
I also take issue with your examples: your example of an offensive ambiguity-inducing Oxford comma is not really a fair example. If “my best friend” is intended to be a modifying phrase or a non-restrictive clause then the second comma is not an Oxford comma at all. If Irene is not in fact the best friend and you did intend to list a series of items that accompanied you to the party, then I would suggest that the problem is not the addition of the Oxford comma but the lack of context or the choice of wording. You could have simply listed two names—i.e. I went to the party with Irene, Bob, and beer. A difference in word choice would mean that the addition or omission of the Oxford comma would have been inconsequential.
I also really like the two funny illustrations (at least I find them funny). I like them because they make a point: they demonstrate that punctuation matters, that it has the ability to alter the meaning of words. Perhaps my feelings here can be attributed to teaching grammar and writing to students who had zero interest in grammar and writing. I don’t think that either of the sentences in the illustrations would ever be misunderstood sans Oxford comma but that’s the point. The silly illustrations demonstrate the potential for ambiguity. Grammatically perfect prose can be unclear, but if people understand how to use the grammatical resources that are part of our language they stand a better chance of being understood. For my part, I’ll keep the Oxford comma and hopefuly use it well
Okay, fair enough. I’ll admit that my ambiguity-inducing comma example was selected as much for its chance to be funny as anything. But we can still come up with an example where it creates ambiguity merely by listing three people and forcing apposition there.
“I went to the party with my Mother, Irene, and Jim.”
Now my mother is Irene, and we went with Jim.
“I went to the party with my Mother, Irene and Jim.”
Now my mother would have to be both Irene and Jim. Any list of the form,
“X, Y, and Z” is ambiguous if Y can be considered appositive to X, allowing for cases where Z is completely unrelated to both X and Y. But in that case, the Oxford comma again has no impact.
I still think the first illustration is actually just completely wrong–it literally makes no sense at all. The second illustration could make its point better if it used characters that weren’t dead. I know it’s trying to be funny, but I still think it should hold up under scrutiny, which it doesn’t. If the Oxford comma is meant to reduce ambiguity, the situation itself should be relatively unambiguous. (Actually, the situation IS unambiguous; it is impossible to invite JFK and Stalin to parties.)
Like I said to Chris, the Oxford comma doesn’t deserve a name, and it doesn’t deserve to be used by rote, since it’s not a SPECIAL comma, it’s just a comma.
Effectively, we disagree on the point that the least amount of punctuation used in the pursuit of clarity is the correct amount.
Oh dear, here we go again. I think we are agreed that the Oxford comma has a limited use, but surely you would not begrudge giving this mark its fair due and deprive it of a name. Look at the exclamation point—now, there’s a one-trick pony but it still has a name. Ditto for the question mark. Would you rather we refer to the Oxford comma as the “mark of punctuation formerly known as the Oxford comma”? That seems a bit churlish to me. After all, the Oxford comma has inspired a cool song and many wonderfully, albeit nerdy, debates among writers, academics, and bloggers. See what I did there? If I did not use the Oxford comma in my previous sentence, you may believe that I meant “academics who are bloggers” rather than “academics and bloggers.” Someone once said that it is best to end with laughter rather than tears so I’ll end with a little joke: Exclamation mark asked the Oxford comma how his date with apostrophe went. Oxford comma sighed and said “I don’t think it will work.” Exclamation mark asked “why not.” Oxford comma replied: “I fear Apostrophe is just too possessive.” Okay, that was terrible. Hopefully, you can forgive me in time.
We’re agreed to use the comma when it removes ambiguity. I just don’t agree we should use it when there’s no impact on clarity whatsoever.
Grammar jokes, like math jokes, are always forgiven.
I believe we have found common ground. Thanks for the provocative blog post and lively discussion.