All Hail The Oxford Comma

That nifty little punctuation mark that many argue over…

Photo by MORAN on Unsplash

I have a confession to make. I’m not just in love with the Oxford comma, but with commas generally. They make for absolute precision in our writing, and shouldn’t be ignored.

To that end, when editing my own work, I make a habit of reading my articles several times, aloud, to ensure that all are present and correct!

Notice that ‘several times aloud’, doesn’t bring the clarity of, ‘several times, AND (also), aloud’.

And just as an example of the need for commas generally, allow me to use a sentence from the profile of a Medium writer whose work I very much admire, Jim McAulay🍁, who states: ‘My favourite things are eating my family and not using commas’. That always makes me smile.

So we deduce three things about him. He’s:

• a cannibal
• maybe an inept writer
• or both

Of course, what he should have written, is this: ‘My favourite things are, eating, my family, and not using commas’.

So now we are better informed about him. He loves:

• eating
• and his family
• and not using commas.