Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss [25]
But we’ll come to such lovely enjoyable things by and by. In the meantime, however, this is serious. Sharpen a pencil, line up your favourite stimulants, furrow the brow, and attempt to concentrate on the following.
1. Commas for lists
This is probably the first thing you ever learn about commas, that they divide items in lists, but are not required before the and on the end:
The four refreshing fruit flavours of Opal Fruits are orange, lemon, strawberry and lime.
I had a marvellous time eating in tavernas, swimming in the turquoise water, getting sloshed on retsina and not sending postcards.
The colours of the Union Jack are red, white and blue.
The rule here is that the comma is correct if it can be replaced by the word and or or. For example: “I had a marvellous time eating in tavernas and swimming in the turquoise water and getting sloshed on retsina and not sending postcards.” This would be the grammatical consequence of omitting the comma: a sentence that is clumsy (and sounds a lot more sloshed), but still counts as grammatical. What a loss to the language it was, incidentally, when they changed the name of Opal Fruits to Starburst.
However, if you feel you are safe paddling in these sparklingly clear shallows of comma usage, think again. See that comma-shaped shark fin ominously slicing through the waves in this direction? Hear that staccato cello? Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma (also known as the serial comma) and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don’t know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: “The flag is red, white, and blue.”
So what do you think of it? (It’s the comma after “white”.) Are you for it or against it? Do you hover in between? In Britain, where standard usage is to leave it out, there are those who put it in – including, interestingly, Fowler’s Modern English Usage. In America, conversely, where standard usage is to leave it in, there are those who make a point of removing it (especially journalists). British grammarians will concede that sometimes the extra comma prevents confusion, as when there are other ands in the vicinity:
I went to the chemist, Marks & Spencer, and Nat West.
I went to Nat West, the chemist, and Marks & Spencer.
But this isn’t much of a concession, when you think about it. My own feeling is that one shouldn’t be too rigid about the Oxford comma. Sometimes the sentence is improved by including it; sometimes it isn’t. For example, in the introduction to this book (page ref) I allude to punctuation marks as the traffic signals of language: “they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop”. And, well, I argued for that Oxford comma. It seemed to me that without the comma after “detour”, this was a list of three instructions (the last a double one), not four. And here was a case where the stylistic reasons for its inclusion clearly outweighed the grammatical ones for taking it out. This was a decelerating sentence. The commas were incrementally applying the brakes. To omit the comma after “detour” would have the sentence suddenly coasting at speed again instead of slowing to the final halt.
Anyway, there are some more points about commas in lists before we move on. In a list of adjectives, again the rule is that you use a comma where an and would be appropriate – where the modifying words are all modifying the same thing to the same degree:
It was a dark, stormy night.
(The night was dark and stormy)