by Lily
If you’ve been involved with the more academic side of the internet in the past decade, you are likely to have encountered some mention of the elusive and controversial Oxford comma. However, there is also a good chance you haven’t encountered an actual explanation as to why teenagers on the internet will defend it until their dying days, nor why some think it is clunky, dogmatic, and allows for slopier writing.
What it is
Sometimes called the serial comma or the Harvard comma, the Oxford comma is an article of punctuation placed before a coordinating conjunction (usually ‘and’) in a list of three or more items. For example: “My favorite books are Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter.” In the AP style guide, it is only used to add clarity to an otherwise confusing sentence such as, “Harry went to visit his parents, Dumbledore and McGonagall”, without the Oxford comma this sentence seems to say that Dumbledore and McGonagall are Harry’s parents.
Horace Hart, controller of the Oxford University Press from 1893-1915, has been credited with introducing the comma in his style guide for workers at the press, though it was without a name until the late 1970s when Peter Sutcliff referred to the Oxford Comma in his book, The Oxford University Press: An Informal History. In this book, Sutcliff credits another author, F. Howard Collins, with the introduction of the Oxford Comma.
Why use it
In all honesty, whether you choose to use the Oxford comma in your personal writing is entirely up to you and what style guide you follow. It isn’t really grammatically correct to use it nor is it wrong to.
Despite this, there have been a few situations where a missing Oxford comma has caused a great deal of trouble. The most notable one being a real-life legal dispute that resulted in a 5-million-dollar lawsuit. In 2017, three delivery drivers for a Maine dairy company filed a lawsuit for missing overtime wages. Maine law at the time stated that overtime payment protections did not apply to: “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 important phrase here being “packing for shipment or distribution.” Delivery drivers worked in “distribution” but not “packing.” It was unclear whether “packing for shipment” was listed separately from “distribution,” and if they were not intended to be read separately, then delivery drivers would be entitled to overtime pay.
Had an Oxford comma been used, there would have been no room for confusion. This seemingly small oversight led the United States Court of Appeals to rule in favor of the drivers who would be awarded a $5,000,000 settlement! For both the drivers and all the Oxford comma enthusiasts around the world, this case was a major victory.
The use of the serial, Oxford, or Harvard comma is still entirely up to you, and I can’t tell you whether to use it or not. But where clarity and accessibility are concerned, if you forget your Oxford comma, you may find yourself paying a $5,000,000 settlement.
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