Slightly Askew

Ah, the serial (or Oxford) comma

You may have heard Vampire Weekend’s take on it.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?

Erm, I do.

No idea what I’m talking about?

Some people would write

Red, white and blue.

I prefer

Red, white, and blue.

The serial comma is the comma before an and or an or (the conjunction, darling) in a list of three or more things.

Without the comma, white and blue seem somehow related. And less important than red. The serial comma restores equality.

We’d say “red… white… and blue” with equal pauses, so why not let the comma denote that pause?

And when using semicolons to separate a list, it’s common practice to put a semicolon before the last and (or whatever conjunction you decide to use) - so why not with commas?

My real bugbear is that many copywriters pretend to worship the classic Strunk & White book The Elements of Style, yet decide not to use the serial comma.

Did these copywriters give up at page one?

Because on page two of that book it reads:

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

Thus write,

red, white, and blue
gold, silver, or copper
He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents

Who knows what fate has in store for my beloved serial comma. Its usage on these shores is slim, but our American cousins keep the flame burning.

At school, I wasn’t taught to use it. Thankfully I’ve seen the light. My schooling ruined my education.

And it’s lost me some friends (they were bizarre drunken conversations), but nobody said that finding clarity in writing would be easy.

Maybe I’ll send the words “I give a fuck” to vampireweekend@gmail.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Copywriting, Books, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.