What are your feelings about the 'Oxford Comma'?

I agree that the Oxford Comma add more sense to the sentences. But it can’t really be identical in speech, and a lot of commas make a sentence look a bit too formal.

But then again some sentences are ambiguous.

The onus of good communication is always on the transmitter
Anything that helps the transmitter get the message across is a good thing

Right on @josie! Grammar rules are guidelines, not universal absolutes carved in stone. If a comma or any other piece of punctuation enhances communication. Or, conversely, reduces the possibility of mis-communication, use it. Or don’t. And by the way, that’s a personal choice. How one person uses punctuation may be completely from how someone else does, and that’s okay.

I always use the “Oxford” comma. Besides reducing ambiguity, it also looks better on the page.

I’m on team Oxford.

I didn’t know it was just a guideline. It seems silly to make a list of items without commas in between.

In the example provided by the OP, the comma is necessary to inform the reader that there are three distinct things the writer loves. Without it, the reader believes the writer only loves one thing—his parents, whom he then names.

There are many lists, however, that require no comma for clarity. My dress is blue, green and black. I doubt anyone has trouble understanding there are three colors in that list.

Style guides vary, usage across cultures varies (American vs. British English) and personal choice varies. Forget adherence to a “rule,” and write with the reader’s eye in mind. In other words, what Pachy said.

Please forgive my typos and slightly confusing syntax above. I should have learned by now never to compose on my iPhone.

We had this question recently.
I was surprised that most here are in favor of the Oxford comma. I, personally, had tried to ‘modernize’ by dropping the middle comma, as I thought that was recognized as the current form. I’m now using my preferred option – the Oxford comma.

I love it..

And I love The Postal Service, Sage Francis, Fugazi, and Icona Pop too.

You can’t fool me. I still think your parents are Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty. however, to discourage others from this opinion, I think the Oxford comma is preferable. I think it is consistent with how one might pause when speaking that sentence too. In many other cases, I don’t think it’s needed. However it could become confusing and distracting if one frequently used it sometimes but not others. I very rarely use it, except in special cases, as in your example. I’d also consider phrasing it differently if I really didn’t want people to catch on or be confused that Gaga and Dumpty were my parents, rather than assuming they’d take it from the presence or absence of a comma. Particularly given how many people seem to be comma-phobic, comma-agnostic, comma-ignorant and/or comatose these days.

@Zaku I hadn’t thought about that before, but you are right: when uttering the sample sentence in the OP, the speaker would naturally insert a brief pause before each list item.

I tend to favor the Oxford comma because it does reduce, if not completely eliminate, ambiguity of meaning in written communication. However its use is reserved for instances where confusion could ensue in its absence. As an example, consider the book title Guns, Guts, Grits, and Gravy. What the title means, and especially what it is referring to, depends entirely on the presence (or lack) of the final (Oxford) comma. With it, the title is a list of four different items. Without it, it is a list of three items, one of them a traditional southern US breakfast (dinner?) dish.

To paraphrase the Bard,
“To comma, or not to comma—aye, there’s the rub.”

Add another person to team Oxford.

I got to visit Oxford in ‘86. I like their commas.

I always use it. It adds clarity and I love clarity. It also reads better in my mind. My Spanish professor marked me off for using it in a Spanish paper, which got me wondering if other languages don’t use it.

Wikipedia has some examples where the Oxford comma does not resolve ambiguity and sometimes introduces ambiguity.

I only use a comma before “and” if I want to indicate a slightly longer pause, for emphasis eg “I enjoy swimming in the sea, and I also enjoy swimming in the river.”

I prefer the Oxford comma. For the rare cases in which it introduces ambiguity, I either rewrite or re-punctuate to avoid the problem. Fortunately, I am also a big fan of the dash.

^ Could you provide an example for the Oxford comma creating ambiguity?

I think the added pause can add “stiffness” to a sentence. I use it when I need to, but not universally.

@longgone One of the Wikipedia examples that @morphail alluded to is the following book dedication:

“To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God.”

The ambiguity here is whether “Ayn Rand” is an appositive (in which case Ayn Rand is the mother) or a list member (in which case Ayn Rand is distinct from the mother). But this is easily resolved in either case:

“To my mother—Ayn Rand—and God.”

“To Ayn Rand, God, and my mother.”

The former clearly indicates that Ayn Rand is the mother, whereas the latter is clearly a three-item list.

^ Got it, thanks. I’m a fan of the dash, too, so I tend to use that whenever I feel my commas are not making things clear.

@SavoirFaire Au contraire, your latter may ambiguously indicate that Ayn Rand is a God.

A good idea for clearing ambiguity is parallel construction.

“My mother, my God, and Ayn Rand.” The parallel construction of “my mother” and “my God” shows that neither modifies Ayn Rand.

@zenvelo A basic level of intelligence and contextual awareness should be enough for a reader to understand how odd it would be to use “To Ayn Rand, God, and my mother” as a way of indicating one’s view that Ayn Rand is a god. Even my former construction and your parallel construction could be misinterpreted by someone determined enough to do so. For example, one might interpret your formulation in such a way that “my God” is an appositive modifier of “my mother.” It makes no sense to anyone doing even the slightest bit of interpretive work, but language is too complex of a technology to make it immune to willful idiocy.

So, @zenvelo‘s post shows lack of a basic level of intelligence and is willful idiocy, @SavoirFaire?

Thanks @ibstubro ! I am willful in my idiocy, but I would have thought that kind of willfulness required more than a base level of intelligence.

@ibstubro No, because @zenvelo knows perfectly well what the sentence means and was simply pointing out how a person who did lack a basic level of intelligence and contextual awareness might misunderstand it. He wasn’t being willfully idiotic, but speaking on behalf of the willful idiot. Surely you can understand the difference?

Would anyone read “To Ayn Rand, God, and my mother” and think that the writer is saying that Ayn Rand is god? Really?

@morphail Right?