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Use the Oxford Comma — I’m Begging You!
I’d like to thank my parents, Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump.
Really? Are we okay with that?
I am not.
I’m an editor, and I see omissions of the Oxford comma all the time. I cannot fathom why any style guide would permit its omission, but some do. And writing suffers because of it.
Some call it the Oxford comma. Some call it the serial comma.
But whatever you call it, you need it in your life (and your writing).
Okay — if you’re still not sure what the Oxford comma even is, then here you go: its the comma between the last and second-to-last entities in a list of three or more entities. In my example above, the Oxford comma should come after “Winfrey” — because… duh!
For the love of all writing that is not shitty, I beg you: Use the Oxford comma.
Historically, print media organizations often opted not to use the Oxford comma because every character counted. Printing was expensive, and the risk of potential ambiguity wasn’t greater than the cost of adding that single extra comma to all the gazillions of pages they printed.
Today, however, things are different. Space doesn’t matter because most content is published online. And eliminating ambiguity is more important than ever because it’s so easy for any dipshit to tweet your awkward, Oxford-comma-lacking sentence instantaneously, rapidly bringing ridicule down upon you and ruing your literary prospects.
Anyway, in case you still don’t get it, here’s another example:
