The Oxford comma, and other ways to prevent societal collapse
Praise for the clarifying pause
For those who prefer to listen, an audio version, read by me, is available here. ⬆️
At 7:20 on a recent morning, while my husband moved through his “yoga-ish” practice and I hovered at the threshold of basic cognition, I found myself reading headlines aloud, not because they were important, but because they were grammatically correct. Hey, at this point, I’ll take any form of stability I can get.
“You know,” I said, clutching my first beverage of the day like a lifeline, “it’s genuinely comforting to see the Oxford comma still doing its job.”
From his downward-facing dog, my dearest mumbled, “You should write them a thank-you note.”
I might. That tiny, often-maligned, editorially polarizing comma is doing serious work in some very public places. Case in point: a recent headline, which I delivered with more enthusiasm than the hour really called for, pronouncing every comma like a miniature drumroll:
“It Controls Sex, Bowel Movements, and Even Sitting Down.” (Slate, October 2025)
“It’s early,” I said, “but if they’d dropped that last comma, we’d be reading about bowel-oriented sitting, and there’s really no recovering from that.”
He made the sound of a person who does not want to picture that, followed by the sound of a person who now has.
This wasn’t an isolated case. I’d already seen another shining example:
“Sleep patterns linked to variation in health, cognition, lifestyle, and brain organization.” (EurekAlert!, October 2025)
Without the Oxford comma, you get “lifestyle brain organization,” which sounds like it involves influencers, supplements, and at least one documentary series narrated by Gwyneth Paltrow.
I was disproportionately thrilled to see the Oxford comma in action. So of course I launched into a monologue about it, gesturing at my screen like I was defending a dissertation.
“This is what’s saving us,” I declared, while he moved from plank to child’s pose and blinked in my direction.
He offered a diplomatic reply: “Most couples probably aren’t talking about punctuation before caffeine.”
Maybe not, and I’m not here to judge. But maybe if they were, we’d better understand that punctuation can save essential meaning and maybe even the general state of humanity, which, from where I sit, is sliding ever deeper into a soup of confusion.
For those who haven’t spent the early hours of a morning talking about editorial style guides with someone mid-plank: the Oxford comma is the one that comes before the conjunction in a series—the penultimate comma before the final “and” or “or.”
It’s often dismissed as unnecessary, and many times, it is. But when it’s not, it really isn’t. Some classic examples:
At my grandfather’s funeral were two strippers, his wife, and his sister.
This sentence works just fine with the Oxford comma. Four guests, all accounted for.
Remove the Oxford comma, and you get:
At my grandfather’s funeral were two strippers, his wife and his sister.
Which implies a radically different interpretation of his marriage, and possibly his taste in entertainment.
Then there’s this real-world headline, printed by the Associated Press:
Among those interviewed were Merle Haggard’s two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.
Without the comma, the sentence suggests that two of Merle’s ex-wives are, improbably, Kris and Robert.
Remember this apocryphal book dedication?
“This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”
Again, one missing comma and suddenly the author is either a product of divine conception or terribly confused about their family tree.
Still not convinced it matters? Let’s go to court. In 2017, a group of dairy drivers in Maine won a $5 million lawsuit over a missing Oxford comma in a labor contract. The disputed sentence—“packing for shipment or distribution”—lacked a comma between “shipment” and “or.” The court found the sentence ambiguous, and the drivers got their overtime pay.
One missing mark, five million dollars. That’s quite a return on punctuation. And this isn’t just about money or grammar. The fight is never about just one or two things.
The Oxford comma, also called the serial comma, got its name from Oxford University Press, where editors in the early 1900s relied on it to keep academic texts clear. Every letter, every punctuation mark, had to be set by hand, in metal, backwards. Clarity meant labor.
Later, in the world of fast-moving journalism, dropping that final comma became a cost-saving concession: fewer characters, more efficiency. The Associated Press adopted that logic and never looked back.
But the decision came with a price. Guides like the Chicago Manual of Style held onto the Oxford comma, precisely because it prevented confusion, especially in long, complex lists where nuance mattered. One tiny mark could mean the difference between a funeral and a scandal.
Whether you use it often depends on what kind of writer or reader you are. Journalism tends to prioritize speed. Academia and literary publishing tend to prioritize precision. That’s the tension: speed versus accuracy, general comprehension versus exact meaning, a fast list versus a full one.
The Oxford comma, like all commas, asks us to slow down, to consider the context, to look at what’s actually being said. It resists speed and efficiency when what’s needed is specificity, awareness, and space for meaning to fully form. The comma is an invitation to clarity, and clarity is nearly always a matter of context.
For me, this comma is also shorthand for something more. It resists the momentum toward reduction, oversimplification, and prematurely confident conclusions. It’s a pause, a breath, a small act of judiciousness reminding us to make sure we’ve accounted for everything before we move on.
We live in a time that rewards the shortest version of everything: the clip without context, the headline without the article, the bold take without thinking it through. We’re encouraged to declare our positions quickly, to identify the villain in under ten seconds, and to do it all without the benefit, or the burden, of nuance.
But real life, like real writing, is rarely that simple. Most of the time, the extra beat matters. Most of the time, the item at the end of the list is more essential than decorative. Without that pause, that moment of clarification, things fall apart. People get misread. Intentions blur. Lawsuits get filed.
Context makes the difference. The comma helps us see whether someone is an ex-wife or a country music legend, a victim of pelvic floor dysfunction or simply very committed to sitting. It’s punctuation, yes, but it’s also permission to think twice before assuming you’ve got the whole story.
At some point, of course, all of this circles back to the yoga mat. I already know how that’s going to go.
One day at a dinner party, someone will complain about a confusing email or mangled headline, and my husband, who doesn’t usually toss punctuation into casual conversation, will say, “You know, that’s actually an Oxford comma problem.” And he’ll be right. He’ll explain it clearly and charmingly. He will not mention that the only reason he knows this is because I launched into a monologue one morning while he was trying to breathe his way toward serenity.
He’ll leave that part out until I press his knee under the table and remind him that I was the one arguing for the meaningful pause, the moment of discernment.
He’ll say, “Don’t ruin a good story with the facts.”
And I’ll reply, “Yeah, well, skipping the facts is how we got into this mess in the first place.”
~Elizabeth
If you’ve got a favorite Oxford comma example, a pet punctuation hill you’re prepared to die on, or a story involving grammatical misadventure, I want to hear it, and I’m sure others do, too. Drop it in the comments to keep the conversation going.
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Thanks for reading. See you in the margins.🤜🏼🤛🏼
“Don’t ruin a good story with the facts.” That gave me a big laugh. I am also a fan of the OC, and discussions of it turn me into a snobby dork. It's ok. I own it.
“This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” Frightening union!! Thanks for the laughs.