Down with the Oxford Comma
Language is the most purely democratic facet of our society. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated.” The same holds true for grammatical “rules” and conventions; their normalcy is merely a majority condition. Yes, powerful people can use sociolects and certain features of language to self-servingly manipulate popular whims, and language often reflects class, but the eventual acceptance of any component thereof requires sweeping public usage or acquiescence. I therefore submit to the reader a proposal for an admittedly inconsequential grammatical change: eliminate the Oxford (serial) comma. My hope is that more people will come to realize the superfluity of that punctuation mark, for which there seems to be some unexpectedly fierce advocates. With this principle of democratic linguistic change hopefully being eventually settled, we could then redirect our energies to more meaningful grammatical debates. For now, though, this debate remains open.
Why am I so hostile to the Oxford comma? To start, let’s examine other languages. English is quite literally the only language on Earth to employ this grammatical function, and even then it is only a specific form of modern American English. Although scant instances of the comma exist in the pre-modern era, it became popularized after the publication of Hart and F.H. Collins’ Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary in 1905. No other language needs the Oxford comma. They all get by just fine. Why, then, should we force the same feature upon English? One may object and note that the rules of English are different than other languages, and therefore the greater possibility for ambiguity necessitates the comma. However, lists function the same in almost every language, and there is nothing unique about English that necessitates a change. Not even all modern American English requires the Oxford comma! Virtually every journalistic outlet and publication (The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Chicago Tribune et al.) use AP style or some similar style, which abstains from using the Oxford comma. Do you recall an incident when an absent Oxford comma interfered with your comprehension of a news article? I sincerely doubt it.
This brings up the next important point. Defenders of this pernicious punctuation mark often point to its mitigation of ambiguity and its improvement of intelligibility. Yet how often is this really an issue? Again, every other language, every other English dialect and even nearly every American English news outlet don’t use the comma, and it doesn’t seem to be causing any issues. In fact, I just refrained from using it in the previous sentence! It’s really like splitting hairs. Any example the comma’s defenders might proffer in its support would be too contrived and artificial for any serious observer. Here is an example from Thesaurus.com: “We went caroling with our dogs, grandma and grandpa.” The website claims this necessitates the comma. However, there are two glaring issues with this claim. First, it should always be clear from context clues what the subject and object are in any sentence. We know that dogs are not people. Second, if who’s who isn’t clear, the sentence is poorly written from the beginning and should be changed. The lack of a comma isn’t the main problem here, and its removal is unlikely to make a difference anyway. They can so often and so easily be missed. If speaking the passage aloud, too, one runs into even worse problems.
How about this passage? “On the street, he saw his best friends, a drug dealer and a secret agent.” Again, the “missing” comma is not the issue here. If the drug dealer and the secret agent are the best friends in question, they could be introduced with a colon instead of a comma. That would clear the ambiguity. If they are not, and they are really all separate people, then there is an argument to make that adding the comma would remove the ambiguity. But again, the comma is not the cause of the ambiguity; rather, it is the purposefully and artificially poor flow of the sentence. Modifiers like “first” or “and then” could clarify the issue, as could switching the order of the people around. One may object to this and say that the purpose of the Oxford comma is so that one doesn’t have to do this in the first place. But again, a single comma is so often easy to miss, especially when speaking, that one would be best to rewrite such artificially problematic sentences entirely.
Let’s modify the above passage to “On the street, he saw his best friend [singular], a drug dealer, and a secret agent.” Here, I have added the comma to prove a point. The Oxford comma can create ambiguity too. Is the best friend a drug dealer, or are they separate people? In a world without the Oxford comma, removing this problematic final comma would clarify that these are all separate people. Yet in that world, if the writer wished to unambiguously specify that the best friend is the drug dealer, they could keep the final comma not as an Oxford comma but as the second comma of a nonrestrictive clause. The presence or absence of the comma would denote two varying grammatical functions. Always having the Oxford comma prevents us from attaining this great reality. Its defenders may now say, “But this sentence is surely also contrived; could we not just rewrite it for the sake of clarity?” To this I say, “Aha! You are right. These cases are artificial. The sentence structure is the problem, not the comma. You recognize this here, so I hope you now recognize it in the earlier examples, when the Oxford comma is allegedly ‘necessary.’” The comma is irrelevant. The sentence structure is everything.
We must back up and look at the purpose of commas in list contexts. It is to substitute the word “and.” After all, it would be quite tedious to read a sentence as follows: “Among the greatest virtues are honesty and courage and kindness and temperance.” Thus, we use commas: “Among the greatest virtues are honesty, courage, kindness and temperance.” We could also omit the final “and,” instead having merely a comma. Some texts do this with lists, e.g. the Bible in Galatians 5:22–23 (New King James Version). For this reason, it is a common conviction that the Oxford comma is redundant. Why use the comma and the word “and” when the former already conveys the meaning of the latter? There is no reason.
I challenge unconvinced readers to find a single example where one can honestly read a sentence lacking the Oxford comma ambiguously, where a simple restructuring of the sentence or more careful reading would not suffice to eliminate the problem. Find one, and please let me know, for I have yet to do so. Unwavering Oxford comma defenders stubbornly cling to an illegitimate pretended orthodoxy, an authoritarian phantom plaguing our language’s democratic instincts. I genuinely worry in what other fields this fervently “positivist prescriptivist” spirit may so perniciously be applied.
As one final (somewhat trivial) point, take the amount of ink printed and space committed for this punctuation mark. Anecdotally, I have avoided using it on my resume because if I consistently employed it, I would not have enough space given my current formatting. Removing the Oxford comma makes things much easier. In formal journalism, too, it might save a line or two, and that small quantity surely adds up over time. The smallest of marks can make the largest of differences (it would be fascinating to see an estimate or study into how much money the Oxford comma costs printers every year!).
Stubborn defenders may cite one legal case, the only one, where the comma was allegedly necessary to save money. The much-misunderstood 2014 Oakhurst Dairy case involved Maine dairy drivers seeking to clarify their overtime laws. Main state law stipulated that workers were not entitled to overtime for the “canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: (1) Agricultural produce; (2) Meat and fish products; and (3) Perishable foods.” The dairy drivers claimed that the italicized phrase (my emphasis) meant that overtime prohibitions did not apply to them, as they did not pack products for their shipment or distribution. The grouping of the two words here is the main problem. Were they being packed for shipment and distribution, or were they being packed for shipment and also being distributed? Ostensibly, because of the absent Oxford comma, the drivers believed the sole act of distributing food was not included in the above prohibition. The courts ruled in favor of the drivers, costing the company $5 million. But again, this is not the fault of the Oxford comma. “Distribution” and “shipment,” given how similar they are, should never be put next to each other when they are meant to be read separately as they were here. Shifting either of those words to any other point in the list entirely removes the ambiguity. The writers could also have written “distributing” instead of “distribution” to be consistent with the gerund form of every other list element. That would also make readers less likely to group “packing for shipment” and “the distributing of” together. It should be clear that shipment and distribution, functionally the same, should never have been grouped next to each other to begin with.
We are, unfortunately, not at the point of popular rejection of the Oxford comma. 57% of Americans report using it. Yet with a greater understanding of its superfluity, that number can soon change. I realize how much of a non-issue this topic is, but I find grammar absolutists rather annoying, and I find the case against the Oxford comma heavily underrepresented. Thus, I have half-seriously and half-facetiously made that case here, and I hope readers may come away with a broader perspective on this (non-) issue. Together, in the “workshop of society,” we can build a more coherent, egalitarian (,) and sustainable language for all.
AN: I believe everything I wrote here, even if the tone is somewhat (purposefully) facetious.
