How the Oxford Comma Will Make America Great Again

Just Like Hot Dogs, Baseball, Apple Pie, and Stuff

This is a comma. Specifically, an Oxford comma. Know the difference.

I might look like a common comma, but I’ll have you know that I’m an Oxford comma. You might not give a good shit about that, and you wouldn’t be alone. A couple of years ago, the world decided that I was no longer needed. A dinosaur, well beyond my glory days, like a telegraph pole or burlesque.

I’m not trying to bullshit you and claim that I was the be-all, end-all of grammar. The Oxford comma played a minor, yet important role. I was to lists of items in sentences what Sammy Davis, Jr. was to the Rat Pack — an important member who was considered by ignorant people to be just a token presence. It took years for Sammy to get the acclaim he deserved.

Now it is my turn to be forgotten and disrespected.

And yet, I think my story speaks volumes about the state of the world today.

Back in the good old days, everyone understood their places in the world. The subject of a sentence was a noun, the action was a verb, and the object could be either direct, indirect, or prepositional. There were no split infinitives in my day. No one would leave a participle dangling. There sure as hell was none of this leet speak crap and three letter abbreviations.