Lucky Dip

Useful Information No.7 The Oxford comma - who needs it?

What is the Oxford comma, and why do people get het up about its use?

The Oxford comma is a comma placed before the last and or or in a list of three or more items.

Assess your stance on this topic of world-shattering importance by studying the following statement:

For dessert, we were offered apples, oranges, grapes, lychees, strawberries, and passion fruit.

Does that look all right to you?

Or are you seething with disgust at the presence of the comma after strawberries and before and? Did your English teacher, many years ago, drum into you the precept that “...a comma before and is wrong!”?

Some people have been taught to avoid a comma in such contexts. Others are happy to use such commas – sometimes known as serial commas but more generally as Oxford commas because Oxford University Press has included serial commas in its house style for more than a century.

There are some circumstances in which an Oxford comma is certainly necessary to make the writer’s meaning clear. For example, consider the implication of this statement if the last comma is removed:

He was devoted to the memory of his parents, Pope John Paul II, and Saint Theresa of Calcutta.

Does the Oxford comma matter?  Not really.