Deep in the corners of every English program at every college on earth lurks the long-standing argument over the use of the Oxford comma. People are either entirely for the use of the Oxford comma or they are entirely against it — there is no middle ground on the battlefield of the English language.
The Oxford comma is also called the serial comma; it occurs after the second to last article in a list. For example: “x, y, and z.” It’s a matter of clarity, really. One of the most popular examples are the clauses, “two strippers, Bill Clinton and George Bush” and “two strippers, Bill Clinton, and George Bush.” In the former, it is implied that the two strippers are named Bill Clinton and George Bush; there are only two people in the clause. The latter implies that there are four people: two strippers, a person named Bill Clinton, and a person named George Bush.
The Oxford comma was first taken out of sentences in the early days of modern journalism at the end of the 19 Century and the beginning of the 20 Century; the extra comma was more ink, another character and more money. A mere distraction. In the era of online journalism, however, traditionalism has won out and the Oxford comma has stayed miles away from the pages of the "Philadelphia Inquirer" and the "New York Times." I don’t really understand why. And when questioned with, “Why?” most of the answers that I’ve observed are shrugs and various variations of, “That’s just how we do it.”
Many people who do not follow the rules of journalism seem to argue that the Oxford comma is just an unnecessary distraction. It supposedly leads the eye away from the subject of the sentence; in my humble opinion as a writing major, I think this is ridiculous. I spend much more time trying to dissect a sentence without the comma than with the comma. I get hung up on the meaning of the sentence and have to re-read it at least twice in order to fully comprehend the meaning. The Oxford comma separates each item in the list into separate entities and leaving out the comma groups the last two separate items into one.
Most of the people I know avoid the Oxford comma debate when I’m around so that they don’t get a long rant about why I think it’s important. But I don’t think that the Oxford comma should be just an option; I think that it should be considered a basic rule of the English language for the clarity that it gives to sentences that would otherwise be completely unclear and give misleading meanings.
