Welcome back to your regularly scheduled Friday Know-It-All! AV Expert Davis is here this week to discuss the Oxford comma.

Right off the bat I know I’ve got your attention by just mentioning the Oxford comma, otherwise known as the serial comma. This is an incredibly divisive piece of punctuation and has been the subject of many grammar fights since its origin. Let’s dive into the Oxford comma and how it became our most contentious grammatical device.

To note, I may be the AV Expert for Trivia Mafia, tasked with making sure that all our sites have workable sound and video solutions, but my day job is working for a newspaper. Our newspaper, like many others, adheres to the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, which tends to get itself in trouble a lot, like this sports-coverage tweet they did a while ago that really set people off.

The AP Stylebook writers are familiar with enraging the public, which they do in advising journalists to not use the Oxford comma, though that isn’t exactly true. Let’s start from the beginning.

The History of the Comma

Take a trip back with me to the third century BCE. Here, we’ve got a Greek scholar by the name of Aristophanes of Byzantium. He created a system of punctuation that was only dots. These dots were meant to tell the speaker just how long the next passage was going to be. A dot on the bottom meant it would be a short passage, smaller breath. A dot on top meant this was long, so get some air in those lungs, buddy. The dot in the middle was known as a “komma,” in-between breath (whoa! It’s all coming together).

We then cut to the 16th century, when a man named Aldus Pius Manutius started using commas as we know them today. He had taken a forward slash (/), at that time known as a “virgula suspensiva.” These were used to indicate a break in a sentence. Our good friend Aldus made them shorter, and thus the comma was born.

So Where Did That Oxford Comma Come From?

Another jump to 1905, since grammar moves slowly. We’ve got two people who claim to have invented this version of the comma. The first, and most widely recognized as the creator, is Horace Hart. He was the head of the Oxford University Press and required that his employees use a comma before the last item in a series. The other supposed inventor, who came up with it in the same year, is F.C. Collins. The Oxford University Press had bigger pull, so that’s why we don’t call it a Collins comma.

Arguments For and Against the Oxford Comma

I’ll start with one of the worst arguments against the Oxford comma. James Thurber, a humorist and cartoonist for The New Yorker, said the following when referring to the phrase “red, white, and blue” while talking to Harold Ross, a founding editor of the magazine. “All those commas make the flag seem rained on. They give it a furled look. Leave them out, and Old Glory is flung to the breeze, as it should be.” Now, let’s dive into actual arguments.

The biggest argument for including the Oxford comma is to ensure clarity and to avoid ambiguity. The biggest argument against the Oxford comma is to ensure clarity and to avoid ambiguity. There, I hope that clears things up and helps with any ambiguity you might be experiencing. It doesn’t? Well, let’s get into that.

People who love the Oxford comma use the following sentence as an example for why it is needed:

“I’d like to thank my parents, Oprah Winfrey and God.”

The argument here, since the Oxford comma is omitted, is that this person is stating Oprah Winfrey and God are their parents. So, let’s put the Oxford comma in, make it clear. We don’t want people misattributing who the parents are. That makes sense.

The argument against uses a very similar sentence. I will leave the Oxford comma in to emphasize my point:

“I would like to thank my mother, Oprah Winfrey, and God.”

In this situation, we are still using the Oxford comma, but it could be argued, and would be correct, that the Oxford comma implies that the person is stating Oprah Winfrey is their mother. Again, it’s not very clear. We need to clear things up, especially in journalism.

AP Style, Why Do You Hate the Oxford Comma?

A lot of people think the Oxford comma is hated by the AP Stylebook and journalists alike, but that isn’t exactly true. Firstly, the omission of the Oxford comma came from early printing presses. They wanted to save paper and ink, so they chose to omit the Oxford comma.

Let’s cut to today, though. Why are they still omitting the Oxford comma? To be exact: they don’t always omit it, but they do have specific instances where it should and should not be used. The AP Stylebook tells us to not use the Oxford comma to separate elements in a simple series:

“His grandchildren are Vera, Chuck and Dave.”

Oxford comma or not, that sentence is the same, so just leave it out.

The stylebook then goes on to list times you should use the serial comma:

• In a simple series if omitting it could make the meaning unclear.

• Put it in if an integral part of the series requires a conjunction.

• Use an Oxford comma also before the concluding conjunction in a complex series of phrases.

More than anything, they want you to rewrite those sentences that would need an Oxford comma to make things clear. The famous example from “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss states the below sentence as a reason for the Oxford comma:

“The country-and-western singer was joined onstage by his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings.”

The argument from the AP Stylebook is that the above sentence is terrible. It’s unclear and ambiguous, even with an Oxford comma. You need to rewrite it. Here’s a better way to do that:

“The county-and-western singer was joined onstage by his two ex-wives, along with Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings.”

Ambiguity gone. We did it! We know now that we have five people up on that stage and not that the subject considered Kristofferson and Jennings his ex-wives. I bet whoever wrote that line about the country band The Highwaymen didn’t realize that the sentence would be hotly debated for years.

“So, you’re not really taking a stand for or against? What’s the point, then?”

Great question, me. I’m telling you that the most important thing for any style is consistency. Both sides of this argument have their merits. While most of America doesn’t agree with omitting the Oxford comma, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom (the originator of the Oxford comma!) use it similarly to the AP Stylebook. English, what a language! Whichever you choose, just remember to be consistent, clear and straightforward. (Yes, I left the Oxford comma off on purpose here. Old habits and whatnot.) — AV Expert Davis Steen

(A quick note on Trivia Mafia’s house style: While we mostly adhere to AP Style, our needs diverge slightly, since all of our trivia content is meant to be read aloud, by dozens of different hosts, in a variety of settings. We’ve found that the Oxford comma, along with a properly structured sentence, is a good way of maintaining clarity across a diverse spread — since it really matters for the purposes of a trivia question whether we’re talking about your parents, Oprah, or God.)