Pages

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Comma Nazis Must Die (Or At Least Do Research First)

While bouncing around Facebook and not getting homework done, I ran across the following comma-related image:

The Oxford comma—also called the serial comma—is the nickname given to a comma that comes before the last thing on a list of three or more things.  For example, look at this sentence:

"I invited Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Great Pumpkin over."

The last thing on the list is "the Great Pumpkin", so the comma before it is the Oxford Comma. But, it is not necessary to always have the Oxford comma at the end of a list.

"I invited Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Great Pumpkin over."

See?  No Oxford comma, but no confusion or grammatical error.


Now, when a list has just two items in it, a comma is actually incorrect to place between the items. 

I went to the store with Jeff, my girlfriend.

In this case, I would have to use the word "and", or admit that my girlfriend has a rather burly name.

I went to the store with Jeff and my girlfriend

It is only when there are three or more items that commas are necessary. 

The problem with the Facebook picture is that it is implying something grammatically impossible.  It claims that the sentence "I had eggs, toast (no comma) and orange juice" would mean that toast and orange juice are one item. However, that would make the list have only two items: eggs and toast-and-orange-juice.  Since no list which has a comma in it can have so few items, the reader is left with two possible interpretations: either there are three separate items listed, or the author is addressing toast and orange juice. As with most writing, context will determine whether it's a list or whether the person speaking talks to inanimate objects.

P.S. Someone on Tumblr went ahead and made a correction to the image which kinda shows my point:

2 comments:

  1. I see your point, Muffin Man, but I'm still gonna use my Oxford Comma.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good. I wasn't advocating abandoning the Oxford Comma.

    ReplyDelete