Speaking of Words
By MICHAEL FERBER

            More and more writers and publishers are joining newspaper editors in the belief that the second-last item in a series needs no comma after it.  They would write

                        of the people, by the people and for the people

or

                        solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short

They say the “and” sufficiently separates the last from the second-last item, so a comma is superfluous.  But this is a mistake.  It is not the function of the “and” to separate the last two items; it is to unite all of them.  The comma before “and” does what its kindred commas do in the rest of the series: separate each item from the next.

            That comma must also separate the second-last item from the “and” itself, which must not be taken as uniting the last two items more intimately than it unites all the items in the series together.  It is a false argument, in other words, to say that because a list of only two items needs no comma before the “and” a list of three or more should conclude the same way.  For example:

                        The Garden was inhabited by the serpent, Adam and Eve.

            This is a terrible sentence, but perfectly correct according to the anti-comma school.  “Adam and Eve” is a closely unified phrase sanctioned by long usage, and its appearance at the end makes the sentence sound unfinished.  We expect another item, such as, “the serpent, Adam and Eve, and Lilith,” so we have been misled into misreading it.

                        The Garden was inhabited by the serpent, Adam, and Eve.

            This is a good sentence: note how it separates Adam from Eve, with a subtle but dramatic effect.  The anti-comma school would ban such sentences.  If one wanted to keep “Adam and Eve” together without a comma one could write, “the serpent, and Adam and Eve,” or “Adam and Eve, and the serpent,” but the anti-commatists would eliminate those commas, too, and ruin the effects.  By making it a rule that the last two items must lack a comma between them, this school has restricted the expressive resources of English; it has hamstrung writers in a sometimes crucial way.

            If you say a sentence with a series aloud, moreover, you will pause before the “and” for the same little beat that you paused at each earlier comma, so a comma there reflects normal oral practice.  It is bad to have a writing convention that departs from such usage.

            Law firms insist on being exceptions to this rule:

                        Airdale, Airdale, Whippet and Pug

But few lawyers remember how to write.

            It is sometimes essential to have the final comma or confusion will result, especially when the items in the series are themselves compound:

                        We invited President and Mrs. Trump, the Viscount and Viscountess

                        Poobah, Ed and Myrtle Jones, Madonna, and Elon Musk.

Note what happens, for a startling moment, if you leave out the last comma. 

            The habit of omitting the comma, I admit, sometimes earns its right to exist through sheer hilarity.  To make the point that its gyms are “judgment free zones,” Planet Fitness, Inc., places a large sign in the front of its exercise room that defines a “lunk” as “one who grunts, drops weights and judges.”  We might suppose it is a judgment-free zone because some lunk dropped all the judges from a considerable height.  PF, Inc., also drops hyphens, unless it believes that it offers us free zones for judgments.

            On December 10, 2013, Sky News announced these top stories: “World leaders at Mandela tribute, Obama-Castro handshake and same-sex marriage date set . . . .”

            The arguments I have been making apply, of course, to series of terms united by “or”:

                        You may order a piece of cake, a plate of cheese and crackers,

                        or a slice of pie.

            It is rare to encounter a defense of the leave-out-the-comma policy, probably because once a writer or editor stops to think about it the correct policy reveals itself as correct.  Many writers and editors just leave it out, though they probably have no considered opinion.  What positive reasons might be offered for getting rid of the comma?  To save ink?  Be serious.  To simplify?  But what could be simpler than a comma?  To save space?  This might be a minor motive in a newspaper, but hardly worth sacrificing clarity for; commas are tiny.  To remove redundancies?  But we have shown that the commas are not redundant, and even if they were, what is wrong with a certain amount of redundancy?  Information theory has shown that a good writing system contains redundancies.  About the only reason one can defend is that it often matters little if the comma is left out.  But that is a very weak reason, because (1) it often matters very much indeed, (2) it is never wrong to put the comma in, and (3) it is unwise to have a variable policy—a policy that requires a comma only when an ambiguity would result from omitting it.  A variable policy itself breeds ambiguities.

            Some people may think it is simpler always to leave the comma out than always to put the comma in, because when you put the comma in you must decide where to put it in.  But the rule is very simple: put it before the “and” or other conjunction that ties up the series.  Is that a problem?

            Opponents of the serial comma may point out that some series of items are ambiguous and their ambiguities cannot be resolved by inserting the comma.  For example:

                        They went to Oregon with Betty, a maid and a cook.

Here, under the regime I have been advocating, Betty is a maid and a cook, but the writer may be trying to say that there was a maid and a cook besides Betty.  Insert a comma, however, and it gets worse:

                        They went to Oregon with Betty, a maid, and a cook.

This could mean either that Betty is a maid (but not a cook) or that she is not a maid (or a cook); inserting the comma does not clear up the problem. 

            But if we leave the comma out we are no closer to a solution.  This series is inherently ambiguous and needs more than a comma to rescue it.  It is not ammunition against the comma.

            The only other reason—well, motive—I can think of for omitting the comma is that it is sometimes called “the Oxford comma” or “the Harvard comma.”  “Oxford” and “Harvard” here are evidently just terms of abuse from reverse snobs.  According to the King James Bible, Jesus used that comma, though he was a student at neither Oxford nor Harvard.  And if that is not a sufficiently high authority, we learned last spring that Donald Trump likes “the Oxford comma,” too.

I am happy to hear from readers with questions or comments: mferber@unh.edu.Michael Ferber moved to New Hampshire in 1987 to join the English Department at UNH, from which he is now retired. Before that he earned his BA in Ancient Greek at Swarthmore College and his doctorate in English at Harvard, taught at Yale, and served on the staff of the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy in Washington, DC. In 1968 he stood trial in Federal Court in Boston for conspiracy to violate the draft law, with the pediatrician Benjamin Spock and three other men. He has published many books and articles on literature, and has a deep interest in linguistics. He is married to Susan Arnold; they have a daughter in San Francisco.