The Oxford comma can be a useful tool in writing, whether it’s to make anything you write in list form more clear or whether it’s used to add style. Most style guides allow its usage but some view it as unnecessary or even slightly pretentious. There are those who argue that a comma should never precede a conjunction such as ‘and’. You should certainly use it in cases where your meaning would be unclear without it, but overuse of the Oxford comma is to be avoided in academic writing.
‘The colours of the Australian flag are red, white, and blue’.
In the above sentence, a comma before the final ‘and’ isn’t strictly necessary, but it does emphasise a pause and add style.
In some cases, however, an Oxford comma is necessary to avoid confusion or ambiguity in a list. Without it, the final two items in a list might be grouped together. Take, for example, the following sentence:
‘I’d like to thank my teachers, my mother and Charles Dickens’.
Without an Oxford comma, the reader might assume that the writer’s teachers are his/her mother and Charles Dickens. An Oxford comma would separate the three:
‘I’d like to thank my teachers, my mother, and Charles Dickens’.
In some cases, reorganising the items in the list is enough to resolve the problem, and the sentence would make more sense written like this:
‘I’d like to thank my mother, my teachers and Charles Dickens’.
If, in any list, the first word is in the plural and the following two are singular, consider rearranging them to make your meaning clear.
The Oxford comma is useful, and in some cases definitely necessary, in clarifying your meaning when using lists. However, overuse of the Oxford comma purely for style reasons can be a bit too high register and overly literary if repeated often throughout a piece of work. As with many style devices, use it in moderation so that it doesn’t lose its impact.
Also known as the serial comma, or the series comma, the Oxford comma is a comma placed before the final ‘or’, ‘and’ or ‘nor’ in a list. It is so named because the rule allowing for use of a comma in this way is found in the style guide of the Oxford University Press. It would be used like this:
‘The colours of the Australian flag are red, white, and blue’.
In the above sentence, a comma before the final ‘and’ isn’t strictly necessary, but it does emphasise a pause and add style.
In some cases, however, an Oxford comma is necessary to avoid confusion or ambiguity in a list. Without it, the final two items in a list might be grouped together. Take, for example, the following sentence:
‘I’d like to thank my teachers, my mother and Charles Dickens’.
Without an Oxford comma, the reader might assume that the writer’s teachers are his/her mother and Charles Dickens. An Oxford comma would separate the three:
‘I’d like to thank my teachers, my mother, and Charles Dickens’.
In some cases, reorganising the items in the list is enough to resolve the problem, and the sentence would make more sense written like this:
‘I’d like to thank my mother, my teachers and Charles Dickens’.
If, in any list, the first word is in the plural and the following two are singular, consider rearranging them to make your meaning clear.
The Oxford comma is useful, and in some cases definitely necessary, in clarifying your meaning when using lists. However, overuse of the Oxford comma purely for style reasons can be a bit too high register and overly literary if repeated often throughout a piece of work. As with many style devices, use it in moderation so that it doesn’t lose its impact.