| Sentence without Oxford comma: I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God. | Sentence with Oxford comma: I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand, and God. |
1. From Wikipedia: “In English language punctuation, a serial comma or series comma (also called an Oxford comma or a Harvard comma) is a comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and or or) in a series of three or more terms. For example, a list of three countries might be punctuated either as ‘France, Italy, and Spain’ (with the serial comma), or as ‘France, Italy and Spain’ (without the serial comma).”
“A majority of American style guides mandate use of the serial comma, including APA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, The MLA Style Manual, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual.”
2. The Oxford comma is perhaps the most contentious issue in English grammar. Bur for legal writing, this issue has long been settled by numerous experts such as Bryan Garner, Joseph Kimble, Mark Painter, and Richard Wydick; they all recommend using the Oxford comma to avoid ambiguity or confusion. For example, based on Garner’s guidelines for drafting court rules, the Oxford comma was used in the Plain English restyling of all the US Federal Rules of Court.
3. Cases involving the Oxford comma:
(a) “Peterson vs. Midwest Security Insurance Company,” Supreme Court of Wisconsin, 2001: the lack of a serial comma created an ambiguity in Wisconsin’s recreational immunity statute.
(b) “O’Connor versus Oakhurst Dairy” US Court of Appeals, First Circuit, 2017
For want of a comma, we have this case. It arises from a dispute between a Maine dairy company and its delivery drivers, and it concerns the scope of an exemption from Maine's overtime law.
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.
4. The “Ombudsman Stylebook” recommends the nuanced use of the serial comma. Posted below is the Stylebook’s complete guideline:
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| Note: Click the graphic above to view or download the Ombudman Stylebook. |
3.2.3. Use commas to separate items in a series (three or more items).
Such commas are called serial commas. If the last two items in the series are obviously different from each other, do not insert a comma.
Examples:
a. The signatories to the contract represented the governments of Greece, Spain and Italy.
b. The terms of the sale were reviewed by the executive director, the chief accountant and the cashier.
c. The virus spread in the U.S., Asia and Europe
Sometimes inserting a comma between the last two items in a series is necessary to improve comprehension. Such comma distinguishes these two items from the others in a complex list.
Examples:
a. The directive required the department to revise the curriculum, review the textbooks given to the students at the beginning and end the teachers‘ strike. [Note: Without a comma before and, the reader might mistake end for a noun instead of a verb.]
b. The Center for Culinary Arts offers several courses: Bartending, Kitchen Safety, Food Equipment, Environmental Impact, Baking and Cooking. [Note: Without a comma before and, it is not clear if Baking and Cooking is one course, or if Baking is a different course from Cooking.].
Critique of the guideline:
It’s better to follow Garner’s guideline of using the Oxford comma consistently. The Stylebook’s guideline assumes that the reader is able to know the reason why the serial comma was used in one sentence but not in another sentence. But legal writers are responsible for thinking through what they want to say and to make everything clear for their readers.
5. Infographics on the Oxford comma:
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| Note: Click the graphic above to view or download the full infographic. |
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| Note: Click the graphic above to view or download the full infographic. |
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