The Oxford comma is a comma before the final item in a list. For example, it’s the one after “toast” in this sentence: “We had eggs, toast, and oatmeal for breakfast.” If you left out the Oxford comma, it would read “We had eggs, toast and oatmeal for breakfast.”
It’s also called the “serial comma,” and there’s a big article about it on Wikipedia. Why? Because there’s an ongoing squabble among writers and grammarians about whether one should use it. A summary of the issues at hand is in the Wikipedia article, to wit:
Common arguments for consistent use of the serial comma:
- Use of the comma is consistent with conventional practice.
- It matches the spoken cadence of sentences better.
- It can resolve ambiguity (see examples below).
- Its use is consistent with other means of separating items in a list (for example, when semicolons are used to separate items, a semicolon is consistently included before the last item even when and or or is present).
- Its omission can suggest a stronger connection between the last two items in a series than actually exists.
- Its use can “prevent any misreading that the last item is part of the preceding one”.
Common arguments against consistent use of the serial comma:
1. Use of the comma is inconsistent with conventional practice.
2. The comma may introduce ambiguity (see examples below).
3. Where space is at a premium, the comma adds unnecessary bulk to the text.
You can see examples of all of these issues in the article, but I find the arguments for its use to be stronger. In my view, the comma resolves ambiguity more often than it creates it. And as for “inconsistent with conventional practice”, that doesn’t cut any mustard with me, nor does “adding unnecessary bulk to the text.” Unnecessary bulk is less important than clarity.
Now, however, the Oxford comma has been ruled as “necessary”—in at least one case—by a COURT. To see the case and the decision, read the article below from The Write Life:
The issue, decided by an appellate court in Maine, was about whether drivers for a dairy in Maine were entitled to get paid overtime for some types of work. According to state law, drivers are supposed to get 1.5 times their normal pay for working overtime (more than 40 hours per week). But the law spells out some exceptions. You do not get special overtime pay for the following:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
1. Agricultural produce;
2. Meat and fish product; and
3. Perishable foods
Note the absence of a comma after “shipment” in the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution”. This creates ambiguity. If there was an Oxford comma after “shipment”, then the drivers would not be entitled to pay for either “packing for shipment” OR for “distribution”, two separate activities. If the Oxford comma was not placed after “shipment”, as it stands, then drivers wouldn’t get paid for “packing for shipment or distribution”, one packing-related activity, but could get paid for distribution itself, which doesn’t involve packing.
So here the absence of a comma created an ambiguity. Are drivers supposed to be paid overtime for distributing a product or not? The Oakhurst Dairy said no: that the exemption from overtime pay, despite the absence of a comma, was intended to cover the activities of both “packing for shipment” and “distribution”. The drivers disagreed, saying that the absence of a comma meant that “packing for shipment or distribution” meant a single packing-related activity, and that they should be paid overtime for “delivery.”
The drivers won. As the site reports:
Without that comma, as the judge maintained, this distinction was not clearcut:
Specifically, if that exemption used a serial comma to mark off the last of the activities that it lists, then the exemption would clearly encompass an activity that the drivers perform. And, in that event, the drivers would plainly fall within the exemption and thus outside the overtime law’s protection. But, as it happens, there is no serial comma to be found in the exemption’s list of activities, thus leading to this dispute over whether the drivers fall within the exemption from the overtime law or not.
As a result, the court found in favor of the drivers, costing the dairy an estimated $10 million.
I think that settles it, as it’s a legal judgment about how to resolve issues when the absence of a comma creates ambiguity.
I always use the Oxford comma unless my mind slips, and so I agree with this usage. Note, however, that in some instances the comma can create ambiguity or fail to resolve ambiguity. In most cases I run across, however, the comma is useful in resolving ambiguity, and so I use it. If I see ambiguity remaining with such use, I resolve it another way.
So the absence of an Oxford comma has cost a dairy $10 million. It’s not the dairy’s fault, but the fault of those benighted legislators who wrote the law. Bad punctuation can have serious consequences!
And I’m not even mentioning the “grocer’s apostrophe”, which really gets my knickers in a twist:
Your blog is a continuous stream of education, fun and games, and insight.
You used the B word! Almost as bad as the D word…
A form of the D word is in your name Serendipitydawg! Talk about the Kettle…
😎
You have a point, however, it is “… a pune, or play on words” (and serendipity was a canid, so I can’t change it without rewriting history). 😀 😀 😀
Perhaps “mighein” is new to the WEIT website and isn’t familiar with the terminology.
…not to mention Twisted Knickers!
I know Jerry appreciates corrections of spelling and grammar, so if we’re talking about the Grocer’s Apostrophe, he should write that gets his “knicker’s in a twist”!
I have an Ann Elk theory about the Grocer’s Apostrophe: those who remember pre-decimalisation currency will recall that we wrote shillings and pence prices as x/y (eg 2/6 for two shillings and sixpence) and grocers tended to abbreviate that further with a blocky triangle in place of the slash that looked awfully like an apostrophe. I think that became a kind of graphological meme among them, and was generalised to replace other punctuations – hence the same triangular apostrophe finding itself in unneeded situations.
It seems to me that a couple of changes would be appropriate, to read:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, and packing, for shipment, or distribution, of:
The Oxford comma now appears after “storing” with the word “and” to complete the list of activities. Then the phrase “or distribution” is held within a pair of commas, since both “shipment” and “distribution” are meant to be coupled with the final word “of”.
If that is the meaning intended, I think it would promote clarity to enclose “for shipment or distribution” in parentheses.
+1
I think a
1. nice
2. clean
3. numbered
list would be the most apropos.
Simply reversing the items’ order would have resolved the ambiguity without adding an Oxford comma:
(Although it’s a little odd to have the items out of natural time ordering.)
However, I would always use an Oxford comma (and continually battle with our editors about it).
/@
My personal favourite on this was the Gruniad leaving the Oxford comma out when quoting an election victory speech by a Tory MP:
“I would like to thank my parents, Margaret Thatcher and God.”
Made me laugh at the time and I have always remembered it as the reason the Oxford comma exists 😀
This literally made me laugh out loud.
As it did me when I read it… I can’t remember when it was but we still had the Guardian delivered, so it must be from some time in the 80’s.
Yes; it reminded me of my favorite example (from The Oatmeal website):
We invited the strippers, Kennedy, and Stalin to the party.
Very different without the comma!
That’s not remotely ambiguous. It’s obviously a list consisting of the three items:
– parents
– Margaret Thatcher
– God
It’s also fairly standard in Britain (at least, it is how I was taught as a child) not to use the Oxford comma. If I wanted to convey that my parents were Margaret Thatcher and God, I’d probably write
“I would like to thank my parents: Margaret Thatcher and God.”
Sorry, jp: It is more than remotely ambiguous. Yes, MT and God are obviously not the MPs parents. But it’s the ambiguity that makes it funny. If you don’t see any ambiguity, I’d have to conclude that you have no sense of humour.
I don’t know if it’s “fairly standard” in Britain to omit the comma; but presumably not in Oxford!
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No it isn’t. Not unless you are claiming that you really could think an MP’s parents are Margaret Thatcher and God from what the Guardian wrote. I bet, if you heard the speech rather than saw it written down, you would have no issues at all without there being a single comma in sight.
The oxford comma is a convention: it doesn’t matter whether you put it in as Americans do or leave it out as the British do as long as everybody agrees to the same convention. At school, I was taught”no comma before the and” which means that to me “x, y and z” is a list of three items unless the context says otherwise.
And I don’t think the Oxford comma helps much in the case in the story:
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of”
In the USA where the convention is to put the comma in, that list contains eight items, the last of which is “packing for shipment or distribution”. However, it is problematic because the last item itself contains a list of reasons for packing and they forgot to put the Oxford comma in that list. i.e. the last item should be
“packing for shipment, or distribution”
Unfortunately, that would be the same as the outer list containing nine items.
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment, or distribution of”
There are a couple of reasons why this nine item list is the obvious correct reading. Firstly, “packing for shipment or distribution” is a tautology: “distribution” and “shipment” mean the same thing. Secondly, it is the convention with a list, to prefix the last item in a list in English with the word “or” or the word “and”. Had the people who drafted the law written
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing[,] or packing for shipment[,] or distribution of”
we would have the eight item list that was incorrectly ruled as the meaning regardless of whether you put the Oxford commas in.
And, by the way, I do not have a sense of humour (as you can tell from this overlong post) when it comes to proponents of the Oxford comma who smugly wave amusing yet not really ambiguous examples in my face.
nice! 🙂
““I would like to thank my parents, Margaret Thatcher and God.””
It reads fine to me.
I don’t confuse it with
“I would like to thank my parents: Margaret Thatcher and God.”
a meaning that others appear to see in it.
I went to Grammar School in the UK during the 1960s and we were taught never to use a comma before an and.
Ditto. In the couple of years following the 11+ comma before and was verboten, then around 3rd form the Oxford comma was introduced. It was never particularly well explained, in my opinion… if they had used an example like the howler by the Guardian that I posted in the previous comment I would have understood it sooner!
Not even in compound sentences where the “and” conjoins independent clauses (e.g., “This porridge is too hot, and that one is too cold”)?
Ditto but the 1970s
Ditto.
The rule was no comma before a conjunction.
If adhered to and understood there should seldom be any confusion as there are other ways to avoid ambiguity, such as given my reply to 4) Serendipitydawg above.
Yay, hurray, and yippee!
I think the best rule for the Oxford comma (and much else is language!) is not to have an absolute rule.
Leave it out by default, but add it in if necessary to remove ambiguity or if it then reads better.
(The reason for omitting it by default is that there is already one list separator, the “and”, and one doesn’t need two.)
I agree completely. When it is not needed, it can make the sentence heavier. When it’s needed, use it.
Jerry, I have a comma question for you. Do you not follow the rule to always place your comma or period inside quotation marks?
My wife and I talk about this frequently. To me, it makes no sense to put a comma or period inside a quotation mark – to do so implies that the person being quoted used that punctuation mark in their words. The actual words spoken should be ALL that inside quotation marks. However, it is my understanding that my opinion is incorrect according to grammar “rules”. Oh, well…
Your opinion is incorrect in USAian-English but correct in English-English!
I agree. Putting the comma inside disgusts the programmer in me as it breaks the hierarchy.
My generation was taught the Oxford comma at a time when it was the only comma form in use.
Call me a dinosaur if you must, but I have never been able to fathom why it was scrapped by so many in favor of the current alternative, which frequently substitutes confusion and pointless ambiguity for crystal clarity.
So horray for the Oxford comma.
It’s “hurray”.
😉
One source confusion engendered by eschewal of the Oxford comma is that the second and third items in a series may be be misconstrued as an appositive phrase — as in the (perhaps apocryphal) book dedication, “For my parents, God and Ayn Rand”. 🙂
Jerry, shouldn’t that be “grocers’ apostrophe”?
It’s used by one grocer at a time, so either would be correct. Believe me, I pondered that.
Yes, it’s mistakenly used by the odd grocer, certainly not by all grocers, which the plural possessive might imply.
Gak! I put a smiley in there, but it got lost.
So happy! I love Oxford commas!
Yes – I followed a discussion on the Oxford comma in the Guardian, I think, a couple of years ago. The best comment came from someone who said: “It’s the only thing that separates us from the beasts.”
Hahaha. Yes, great comment!
Ugh… I never use the Oxford comma. The ambiguity argument is a bit weird because you can get ambiguity with or without it.
I don’t know what the judges were thinking here because there is no ambiguity. Shipping and distribution mean the same thing so those proclaiming the lack of an Oxford comma caused confusion are saying that there was an exception for “packing for shipping” and “packing for distribution.” But that would be redundant and it would make more sense that the exception is describing the entire production chain from canning to distribution.
In addition, it seems weird that everything is mentioned only for that one sentence. That law will not exist alone but will be surrounded by many other laws. So if there were confusion, one would merely need to look at any other list in the same body of writing to see whether or not an Oxford comma was being used. That would immediately clear up the ambiguity. Unless the drafters were just insane and used it randomly.
“Where is the ambiguity? Over there in a box” Monty Python
In this case, the ambiguity seems clear. You don’t get overtime if you are packing the box for distribution. If there had been an Oxford comma you also would not get overtime for distributing it. The issue is whether packing for distribution part of the same broad category as distribution itself.
But it’s not ambiguous without a comma. Here’s the sentence.
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:”
Let’s say you don’t agree shipping and distribution are the same thing as with the reply below. Even then a list always ends with a word like “and” or “or.”
The sentence cannot be “The A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I” but it has to be “The A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I or J.” There is only one “or” in the sentence so if it were “packing for shipment or distribution” were a single item, the sentence would be grammatically incorrect.
If the last two actions are considered one action (and the phrase “for shipment or distribution” becomes a phrase functioning as an adverb), then the list becomes:
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing of:”
It’s a little off in terms of grammar; but no one would misunderstand the meaning. The “or” is clearly implied.
No one could fairly construe that to mean you don’t get paid OT only if you do all of those things. It is a list of actions that are excluded from OT pay and the or is inherent in the context.
Absence of the comma makes the actual list of activities unclear.
Without the Oxford comma, the last things listed become a single action of packing with two possible future actions to be applied to the things packed. Or at least, as the court found, it can be construed this way as logically as it can be construed the other way (two separate actions: Packing (for distribution) or shipping).
Shipping and distribution may refer to the same thing, but often they do not.
In the beverage industry (and many others, such as the welding industry), distribution would be the dispersal to retail locations or customers, but not if picked up by the customer or transported by a third party, like FedEx. This may be done by the dairy, in this case, or a third party distributor.
Shipping would be when the packaged product leaves the plant, whether transported by the dairy’s own trucks or by a third party. (I have seen inconsistency in the use of “shipping” when the customer picks up the product directly.
There will be differences in where the lines are drawn from industry to industry, but this to be the general form, at least in the northeast US.
One of the reasons punctuation is omitted completely from English legal documents?
Most American legal documents appear to have been punctuated with a broken pepper mill.
One of those three-foot-long numbers?
Should that be “three-foot” or “three-feet”?
I was fascinated by this case from the start as I’m a huge Oxford comma fan and…well, hell, it’s such an interesting case.
And now I’ve been validated in a court of law! Huzzah!
It makes no sense to eliminate the Oxford comma, and I can’t comprehend why style manuals suddenly did and media followed suit (perhaps to save ink at first?). The Oxford comma is essential.
This is my favorite example of why Oxford commas should be used when listing a series: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/946/427/5a4.jpg
Oh, and I’m very glad that the drivers won this case. I thought the intention was clear from the start, but the lack of a comma allowed the company to argue against the obvious interpretation. Now, if only we could clean up those messy commas in the Second Amendment.
I think the Dairy’s intent was clearly to exclude distribution; but they didn’t actually write it that way. Oops!
Welp, I guess our different interpretations just go to show how much the Oxford comma was needed 😛
In that linked GIF, the Oxford comma is clearly far preferable. (The alternative scenario is unedifying).
I’m definitely on the side of using an Oxford comma where appropriate (which is probably most of the time).
cr
Whether to use the serial (or Oxford) comma is a style choice. In the UK it’s not often used. In the US, however, the serial comma is strongly recommended by English professors, publishing writers, the editors of mainstream newspapers and periodicals, those who write composition textbooks, and by usage experts, because its consistent use tends to prevent potential confusion, and in those cases where the writer’s meaning may be clear without it, it does not hinder communication.
Bryan A. Garner, in GARNER’S AMERICAN USAGE (Oxford, 2009), makes the standard case for clarity, saying, “Whether to include the serial comma has sparked many arguments. But it’s easily answered in favor of inclusion because omitting the final comma may cause ambiguities, whereas including it never will.”
“The Chicago Manual of Style” (2010) also recommends using the serial comma because “it prevents ambiguity”: If the last element consists of a pair joined by and, the pair should still be preceded by a serial comma and the first and. “The meal consisted of soup, salad, and macaroni and cheese.” “John was working, Jean was resting, and Alan was running errands and furnishing food.”
The linguist Richard Nordquist writes, “Most U.S. style guides say, ‘Use it–always.'”
The argument for its consistent use has merit partly because the serial comma often provides added precision, and in those instances when it may seem unnecessary it doesn’t hinder comprehension. (Though some odd exceptions may be crafted by contrarians.) Further, writers in the habit of neglecting the serial comma will often unthinkingly leave it out when its use would provide beneficial clarity and when its absence introduces confusion.
I’m still waiting for an example of where adding the serial comma increases ambiguity.
Does anyone have one?
The single example in the wiki article seems really weak. How likely is it that an author’s mother is Ayn Rand (or any famous person, who might be listed by name in such a phrase), and how much more likely that they just like Ayn Rand? Well, some billions to one odds it’s the second.
And, it’s dead simple to resolve, write it:
To Ayn Rand, my mother, and God
or:
To God, my mother, and Ayn Rand
or:
God, Ayn Rand, and my mother
For a non-famous person, it makes more sense that it is ambiguous; but in that case, why would someone write the parent’s name? People just write, “my mother,” or “my father.”
I guess that first re-write is only slightly less ambiguous. Strike that one.
That first rewrite certainly implies that Ayn Rand is ‘my’ mother. Just like the Wikipedia example ‘To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God’
(Even ‘To God, Ayn Rand, and my mother could be taken to imply that Ayn Rand is God. And possibly my mother as well. Far more obscure inferences have made it into print.)
But that’s probably an inherent defect of all lists – they can imply that all items listed are identical or in the same category.
cr
Interesting. In Spanish, at least when I was a kid at school, it is in fact incorrect to use a comma before “and” for the last element in a list or series.
I remember being surprised by the Oxford comma when I was translating my very first serious English text into Spanish.
Just another case that was wrongly decided. Hopefully it will be overturned on appeal to a higher court. Since it is a state law and state court it will only apply to the state if Maine.
Like most bad decisions it was probably decided in favor of the drivers for political reasons. There are more drivers than there are owners of dairies, wholesalers, fisheries or other places that both pack and ship.
I was taught in high school not to use the coma. That was in the fifties. That was the rule then. Some twenty or thirty years ago I read that the then current use was to use the comma, so I started using it. To me either use or non use is clear in meaning, as long as everyone follows the same rule. The problem comes when some places or people find it acceptable and others don’t, so that some people use it and others do not. That is the cause of the ambiguity, not the use or non use in itself.
“Hopefully it will be overturned on appeal to a higher court.”
Hope dashing: It was settled out of court in February of 2018, and the Maine legislature replaced the commas with semicolons, adding one after shipment.
Your interpretation assumes that the missing comma is always there my implication, which would preclude the other sense of meaning. One would be forced to use additional punctuation (e.g. parentheses).
This situation could not be assumed to prevail always. I’ve never heard of such a rule. (I went through school in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s.) Even if such a rule existed, adding the comma would not cause ambiguity, since the meaning of the comma would be implied in the rule (already).
The real lesson is: Always make certain that your meaning is clear and unambiguous, especially in legal documents.
Just stating that your way is right doesn’t remove the ambiguity. As the defendants found out.
The Chicago Manual of Style includes the best rule for grammar (and for life). At the end of a list of rules (I can’t find it right this minute), the final entry is this: “Break a rule when it doesn’t work.”
Then, there’s, the Shatner, comma.
Yes! Actually, your comment reminds me of one of the main reasons I’m on Team Oxford Comma – it reflects most closely how a list is spoken out loud.
I, tend, to think of it as the, Christopher, Walken comma. 🙂
That’s the Shatner. This, is the Christopher Walken, comma.
Recent favorite, on a sign in a pizzeria here in NE WI:
Fabulous Pizza Buffet
Tuesday’s
and
Thursdays
and, of course
Presidents Day Sale
or
President’s Day Sale
“I have always thought in the back of my mind, cheese, and onions.”
And my father wasn’t even a grocer…
My last name is Larys. It has Belgian roots and we pronounce it like Harris. The problem I have is that others often write it as Lary’s. Where the f^@k do they get the need for an apostrophe? When I ask people why they wrote it that way, they say, “I don’t know, it just seemed right.”
I have bigger problems, but this one will follow me to my grave. 🙂
Team Oxford Comma!
I have a t-shirt with this emblazened upon it. elicits looks of puzzlement confusion. But you gotta stand up for what you believe in.
I am a fan of the Oxford Comma. I was taught to use it when I did my English degree but when I worked as an editor, it wasn’t allowed so I stopped using it out of habit (though I thought it was wrong not to use it & had a little mini rant in my head when I came across a situation that omitted it). Now, I use it again, but the official style guide at work says not to. Also, I can’t get used to not using title case for titles; the trend now is to write titles in sentence case. It is sooooo hard for me to do that!
Using sentence case gets you past arguments about whether or not to capitalise “small words” like “with”, “in” and so on. (Some folks even want to capitalise “the”!)
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I capitalise ‘The’ where it’s part of a name.
Case in point – at Piha (on the west coast here in Auckland NZ) there’s a dramatic rocky inlet marked on the map as The Gap. So yesterday I walked across to The Gap to watch the surf. (Not ‘the Gap’ – that’s some other place just named ‘Gap’ – or ‘the gap’ which is any old gap).
cr
P.S. What exactly is ‘title case’? Is it ‘All Words Start With A Capital Letter’?
And ‘sentence case’ – is that just capitalising the first letter of the first word?
Sentence case; yes.
Title case; that’s where it becomes ambiguous.
“The Lord of the Rings” or “The Lord Of The Rings”?
“Gone with the Wind” or “Gone With the Wind” or “Gone With The Wind”?
This is what our firm’s style guide says:
+
See? It’s complicated!
/@
Aaargh! That’s just too much. Who was that written by, a lawyer?
Also, ‘to Be or Not to Be’ just looks wrong. In that particular case, since all the words are short, I’d capitalise ’em all. Surely ‘to be’ is a verb, therefore both parts of it should get the same treatment?
Since the whole thing is a matter of style, I’d throw the whole Style Book in the trash and just ask two questions of any effort at capitalisation: 1. Does it look right / sound right, and 2. Is it likely to cause confusion.
cr
This one drives me crazy when writing a paper in English but citing a French title. (French manuals often do not use what English call “title case”.) Which do you do?
By the rules above, it would be capitalised.
I have fights with my editors when they “correct” quotations from external documents.
They’re quite … annoying.
/@
Sent from my iPhone
>
Yes. But then it would be wrong relative to what one might see on (say) a cover …
True but I just don’t like how it looks because it’s not immediately set off as a title. It’s probably just what I’m used to. Kids these day.
The Wikipedia entry on the Serial Comma is worth skimming. It notes a (rare) example where adding it creates ambiguity:
“To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God”
Is the writer’s mother Ayn Rand?
Likely not, as one can imagine many more cases where such an attrribution would be made by someone whose mother was *not* Ayn Rand.
So,
Team Oxford Comma, rah!
Meh. It’s an oxford comma within a clause. If the rest of the sentence was written, it would be clear enough.
I don’t think so.
‘This book is dedicated to my mother, Ayn Rand, and God’.
That doesn’t change the ambiguity, IMO.
cr
Yeah it does. What’s ambiguous about that sentence?
It’s exactly the same degree of ambiguity as in the phrase ‘To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God’. That phrase (assuming it’s at the start of a book) is effectively a short version of ‘This book is dedicated to …’
There is a possibility in either the phrase or the full sentence that ‘my mother’ is Ayn Rand.
Now if the FIRST comma was omitted (which something tells me is slightly ungrammatical though I can’t put my finger on it), then my maternity would be explicit:
‘To my mother Ayn Rand, and God’.
cr
It’s not the Oxford comma that’s the problem. It’s the first comma.
‘To my mother, and Ayn Rand and God’. Voilà, Oxford comma creating clarity. 🙂
I really do not see where the problem with the Oxford comma is.
So, Team Oxford Comma: great!
With respect, it’s the ‘and’ you added that created clarity, not the Oxford comma.
cr
Of course! 🙂
How about
“To my mother, Ayn Rand, Bill Jones, and God”
“To my mother, Ayn Rand, Bill Jones and God”
The possibility that Ayn Rand is the mother remains, with or without an Oxford comma.
An apposition in the middle of a list will always create ambiguity, and has nothing to do with the Oxford comma issue. They just overlap sometimes.
The standard reading is that list items are not appositions.
To my God, Ayn Rand, and mother.
The Oxford comma can add ambiguity or remove it. Therefore it is purely a question of taste* and arguing about it is as pointless as arguing about whether Hawaiian Pizza is good or disgusting. I go with the old packing maxim “when in doubt, leave it out” but saving a millisecond a million times has not changed my life.
*Unless there is a study that shows statistics on whether it more often adds or removes ambiguity.
Correct, even an Oxford comma needs to be used in the right place, and be followed by the right word, such as ‘and’.
I dunno; I’m a fan of the rhetorical use of asyndeton and polysyndeton — the omission of or insertion of extra conjunctions, respectively.
They can give an immediacy, or languor, to writing.
As usual, Ken, you are way ahead of our simple comma!
The court case is more about an unjust law written by corporate lobbyists and passed by paid corporate shill politicians to undermine further the 40 hour work week which thousands of workers died to achieve in the early part of the 20th century. There is no justification for those exemptions, so the judge was just using the ambiguity of the missing comma to take a small step in the direction of thwarting this unjust law. People are overlooking the big picture in this rather nit-picking debate over the use of a stupid comma.
Agree. See my comment above. My comment should have included this point. Much better expression here of my thoughts.
When I read the statement the ambiguity I immediately noticed was in the numbered list:
1. Agricultural produce;
2. Meat and fish product; and
3. Perishable foods
The preceding statement implies that these items are separated by an “OR”, i.e. it is true if any of 1, 2 or 3 is true.
However, there are “and”s in the middle and at the end of line 2. What?!
Do they mean you lose overtime for
Agricultural produce OR Meat product OR fish product OR Perishable foods
or do they mean you lose it for
Agricultural produce OR (Meat product AND fish product AND Perishable foods)
or
Agricultural produce OR ( (Meat and fish product) AND Perishable foods )
Or something else?
Natural language used for precise specification, whether in law or software development, or engineering generally, is fraught with difficulty. In engineering specs can be handled by lists and tables and logical and mathematical expressions. I sometimes wonder if the law should not adapt these same methods.
I dunno, meat and fish are/is perishable food, so, maybe, “other” perishable foods?
Though I am not a lawyer, my understand of how contract dispute cases like this are decided is NOT to decide based on such concerns. Instead, they go back through documents leading up to the signing of the contract to see what was said by both parties on the subject in question. A party should not be able to gain advantage based on a simple typo.
If there is no pre-signing evidence reflecting on the issue then they look at the logic of the situation. If there is indeed no difference between “shipping” and “distribution”, then that might help interpret the contract. (I suspect there is a difference but that would be determined by specific knowledge of industry terminology.)
This case is also an indictment of the authors of this contract. They should be aware of the pitfalls of the language and assiduously avoid them. List of things should be presented using numbered items. That said, I’ve read many contracts closely and virtually every one contains ambiguities like this.
Some people have looked into using programming languages to avoid these kinds of problems. The contract could be written as a program and then the natural language generated unambiguously from it. The generator program would avoid ambiguity, of course. There should be no need to refer back to the program that generated it.
Avoiding natural language specification was also my though. Using a program language that converts the spec unambiguously to natural language sounds good. Most lawyers are not trained to read the code directly.
This was not the interpretation of a contract but of a law passed by the legislature. And one very poorly written.
You are right in theory that the court looks to tge intention on the parties, or in this case the intention of the legislature. In practice, however, that us not always how it works. Bias of judges and concepts of right and wrong held by judges influence their decisions. That is why so many Court decisions are overruled by higher courts and why there are so many five to four decisions. And why congress fights so hard over nonominees to the federal courts.
Ok, can we now talk about whether to put one space or two after a period? I’m down with the Oxford comma btw…
One.
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Two!
I used to be a Two-man (from the days pounding away on a typewriter), but I’ve capitulated to the Ones.
I use three (in a proportional typeface). But HTML just reverts to a single space anyway, unless I resort to the ‘nbsp’s’. (I just used three in this comment, let’s see what WordPress makes of it…)
cr
Yup, just single spaces. 8-(
cr
There are many other sizes of space and dash available in Unicode. They should all work fine in HTML. They are a bit tedious to enter but, depending on your platform, there are utilities that can make it easier.
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/category/Zs
Only if you’re using a typewriter or, online, a monospaced typeface.
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I think it doesn’t match the natural cadence of speech. When I read something with an Oxford comma I add an unnatural pause.
And then there is The Cambridge comma.
Is that a different shade of blue?
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I remember being taught that both were correct and it was largely a stylistic and context based choice. And that some types of writing required it (I think legal and science writing were the cases given).
It’s curious that Fowler’s “Modern English Usage,” a manual of style for British English, touts the Oxford comma as correct, yet posts from British contributors to this thread aver that they were taught it’s verboten. I’d been under the assumption that omitting the Oxford comma was an American practice.
Quoting from Fowler, 1996, p. 162
“4 Where more than two words or phrases or groupings occur together in a sequence, a comma should precede the and (the omission of the second comma in the fourth example would render the sentence ambiguous). This is the so called ‘Oxford comma’. Examples: an index of social, economic, and religious diversity; excesses of public, political, and intellectual opinion; areas of natural beauty, architectural monuments, and sites of historical interest; New premises were opened by Marks & Spencer, Jaeger, and Currys. The ‘Oxford comma’ is frequently, but in my view unwisely, omitted by many other publishers. Their preference is to omit it as a general rule (e.g. tea, scones and cake) but to insert it if there is a danger of misunderstanding (tea, bread and butter, and cake—examples from J. McDermott, 1990). A fuller example: The Mind of South Africa is an extremely ambitious blend of personal memoir, ideological polemic and orthodox history—R. Malan in London Rev. Bks, 1990.5
Every edition of Fowler that I’ve seen, including its predecessor, “The King’s English,” published in 1908, states that the Oxford comma is the way to go. I agree.
Who published those books … ?
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Oxford, of course! What can this be? a case of blatant punctuation hegemony masquerading as ‘correct’ grammar; even the eponymous branding? You can find info about the editions I’m referring to(also texts) on the Internet.
I choose to not acknowledge ambiguity. If there’s no comma separating clauses, then they aren’t separate, as the judge concluded.
The Oxford comma never adds ambiguity. Those that claim otherwise are lying. When you see a sentence with an Oxford comma that seems ambiguous, it’s because the sentence itself is poorly constructed. If you removed the Oxford comma, it would remain poorly constructed.
If it’s ambiguous whether you’re listing additional clauses, or adding a qualifier, then use different punctuation. There’s nothing wrong with using semi-colons instead of commas as separators, if you want to use commas to add some kind of qualifier.
Or use parentheses (which let you clarify a clause), so that the commas aren’t ambiguous.
Maybe hyphens – which let you interject pretty much anything – are better suited to removing the potential ambiguity.
Anything but omitting the required final comma in a list.
Thank you, Jerry!
Steven Pinker gives a great argument for the Oxford comma with these examples (in The Sense of Style). I’m not sure if Pinker made these up (probably) or whether he actually found them.
Among those interviewed were Merle Haggard’s two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.
This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
Highlights of Peter Ustinov’s global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.
Fred
Wait, you’re telling me the Mandela wasn’t a divine sex toy fiend?
Bah to the Oxford comma.
Only those who don’t understand the rules require it.
Yeah, the court ruled incorrectly.
If the “packing for shipment or distribution of” part was meant to be one item (it doesn’t make sense actually, because “shipment” and “distribution” mean the same thing in this context), there would be an “or” before it to signify it was the last item of the list i.e.
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing[,] or packing for shipment[,] or distribution of”
Never use it!!!
Ever!
Bloody Oxford… 😉
Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend: https://youtu.be/P_i1xk07o4g
That was great. I like how people are arguing about the Oxford comma on YouTube in the comments too.
Love it!
“A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
“Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“Well, I’m a panda,” he says. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
There is also a book on the use of the comma titled “Eats, shoots and leaves”.
That’s an excellent book too! Very enjoyable.
Professor Strunk endorses the serial comma. Enough said!
However, there is a flaw in that sample sentence. It should say “We had eggs, toast, and bacon.”