You guys, I'm so serial

Well, I’m finally back. When I decided to write this entry about serial commas, I thought it would be no problem at all. There are some elements of English about which I am especially passionate, and the use of serial commas is one of them. But when I sat down to write it, and I sat down to write it about five different times, I simply didn’t know what to say. Should I be coming at it as a cheerleader or a grammarian? Should I encourage people to use the serial comma or, if they decide they don’t like it, tell them how to omit it properly? This internal struggle resulted in four worthless drafts. So, I’ve determined that there’s really only one way to get this out: a total brain dump. It may not end up being any better than the trash I wrote over the past few weeks, but at least I’ll get it all out.

When I was growing up, I was taught certain rules about the way English worked, rules that many people now find obsolete. But there is one that really stuck with me: in a list of three or more items, commas should be used to separate each element from the others. The serial comma, also know as the Harvard or Oxford comma, is the final one in the list—the comma that directly precedes the conjunction. I love this little comma for a few important reasons. To start, using it can reduce ambiguity. Consider the following example from The New York Times:

“By train, plane and sedan chair, Peter Ustinov retraces a journey made by Mark Twain a century ago. The highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demi god and a dildo collector.”

By omitting the serial comma in the second sentence, the sentence becomes unclear. Are we looking at a list here or a description? While I admit that nearly everyone reading The New York Times knows exactly who Nelson Mandela is, that sentence simply doesn’t work. Plus, it just looks so clunky and awful, doesn’t it?

That brings me to my second point, which is that using the serial comma makes a sentence prettier and easier to read, even if leaving it out doesn’t introduce any problems. Look at the first sentence in the example above. To me, it seems strange to leave off the serial comma in the beginning clause when you know you’ll have to put one after “chair.” I can’t help but think that sentence looks unbalanced. The real point of punctuation is to guide the reader through written text, showing him where to stop, what’s describing whom, emphasizing importance, and so much more than I can begin to cover. Punctuation wasn’t invented so some of us could show off and make ourselves look smarter than those around us. It was designed to help us. When I read a list and don’t see that last comma, it doesn’t exactly make me foam at the mouth and have a seizure. Not exactly. But it leaves me feeling that the sentence isn’t complete, that somehow it isn’t rounded out, that I’ve been cheated out of a little something.

In my work, I often have to omit serial commas for style reasons. I grudgingly accept this because advertising and literature are different worlds. In my work, The AP Stylebook tends to be king. Like most style manuals for newspapers and magazines, The AP Stylebook discourages the use of serial commas except when leaving them out creates ambiguity. This sort of style was designed to be simple and was meant to be used when working in media that allow for limited space. If you work somewhere that forbids serial commas, leave them off. But know that they aren’t wrong. In fact, for centuries, they were used as helpful guides to show the way forward. Especially when sentences are complex, the serial comma helps us make sense of things.