Oxford comma--yea or nay?

[Anodyne]

I didn't know it was called the Oxford comma back then, but my 10th grade English teacher said a comma should be used when the meaning wouldn't be clear without it. "After flipping the flapjacks over Mother...."

[Javasaurus]

I didn't know it was called the Oxford comma back then, but my 10th grade English teacher said a comma should be used when the meaning wouldn't be clear without it. "After flipping the flapjacks over Mother...."

It also has other names. The editors that I've worked with — being proponents of the Chicago Manual of Style — refer to it as the "serial" comma.

[Jim Kelly]

I never heard of the Oxford comma until recently. But on social media, there seems to be several folks championing the "Oxford comma"--so that's why I called it that. I always knew this convention existed, but it had no name. Given it goes against how I think about the comma or "and" when I'm writing--I just thought of it as wrong.

[ERON]

The way I explain it to my students is that a comma should go where you would naturally pause when speaking aloud.

So in the sentence, "We're having steak, green beans, and potatoes for dinner," you would naturally pause after the words "steak" and "beans" when speaking aloud, so that's where the commas go.

Contrast that with the sentence, "We're having steak, peas and carrots, and potatoes for dinner." Since peas and carrots counts as a single side dish, you wouldn't naturally pause after "peas" when speaking aloud, and so you wouldn't put a comma there.

[MyriVerse]

Very pro Oxford comma.

And Lincoln and Reagan demand Trump and the traitors leave. :P

[DrNewGod]

I have no strong opinion, only a horror.

I had to sit still whilst two librarians beat each other bloody over whether my use of the Oxford Comma made my (successfully defended) doctoral dissertation acceptable to the university archives. Over a period of weeks.

The outcome had a five-figure impact on my starting salary at my new job.

[SJNeal]

I am for Oxford commas, semi-colons, and two spaces between typewritten sentences.

This, this, and this.