The Oxford Comma

The Oxford comma appears to be in the firing line of late with two articles about those seeking its demise. Apparently, its use indicates “smug pedantry” Oh, well, that’s my cards marked, then. Mind you, anyone who can come out with the following…

As H W Fowler said in Modern English Usage, “Pride of knowledge is a very unamiable characteristic, and the display of it should be sedulously avoided.”

…really needs to start taking his own advice and isn’t someone whose advice I am going to take with anything other than a pinch of salt, once I’ve stopped giggling at the overt display of smugness and pride of knowledge. I have a similarly low opinion of Kinglsey Amis and his assertions of “prissy, fussy, priggish, prim”. Speak for yourself and your opaque, tedious and unreadable prose before wading into others.

As the Groan piece points out, the Oxford comma has a use, much like other less frequently used punctuation. It adds clarity to a list of clauses, that is all. I wonder, sometimes, about those people who allow themselves to become so heated about such things as marks on a page. It’s just a comma after all. If you don’t like this particular use, no one is making you adopt it. So don’t then.

In general, I will mentally read the text aloud and if it seems that there needs to be a pause, then I’ll put in a comma. If that comma is between the penultimate clause in a list and the “and” before the final one, it goes in. Simple, really, so why the fuss?

And that is all the Oxford comma does; place a brief pause between the penultimate clause in a list and the final one where “and” is used. No smugness, no pedantry, it ain’t prissy, fussy, priggish or prim, it doesn’t indicate pride of knowledge and it isn’t fiddly. It’s just a mark on a page.

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Update: A good example of the oxcom aiding clarity here:

encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector…

The mind boggles.