The Oxford comma: A 500-year-old pause worth keeping

The Oxford comma: A 500-year-old pause worth keeping?

A note before we begin: this blog follows AP Style, meaning we don't use the Oxford comma. After a painful debate, we decided consistency must reign, despite the topic.

Each year on September 24, language lovers celebrate National Punctuation Day, a lighthearted but sincere tribute to the small marks that hold written language together. Among periods, colons and exclamation points, one punctuation mark tends to spark the fiercest loyalty and controversy: the Oxford comma.

Beloved by some and rejected by others, the Oxford comma, also called the serial comma, is the final comma placed before and in a list of three or more items. It is the difference between "red, white, and blue" and "red, white and blue." Its stylistic history spans five centuries, shaped by printers, scholars and even courts.

Printing Clarity: The Comma's Early Function

The comma first entered print in Renaissance Europe. In our Early Modern Collection, 16th-century publications show how printers like Aldus Manutius in Venice helped establish punctuation as a visual guide for syntactic structure, not just for oral pauses. His work, De constructione verborum (1510), reveals commas used to separate short clauses and items, but there was no firm rule yet about serial punctuation.

A generation later, greater consistency began to emerge. Orthographiae ratio (1561), published by Paolo Manutius, Aldus's son, marked a turning point in punctuation history. This influential guide promoted a more systematic use of commas, colons and periods based on syntactic logic, helping to formalize their role in Latin scholarly writing and shaping typographic standards for decades to come.

By the 17th century, English-language works reflected evolving but still inconsistent comma usage. English grammar instruction had begun to treat punctuation as a tool of syntactic discipline. In A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole (1661), schoolmaster Charles Hoole explains to young teachers that "a Comma (,) distinguisheth the shorter pause" in sentence structure. Preserved in our Early English Books Online collection, Hoole's manual reflects a shift toward consistent usage of punctuation marks in classrooms - not just for oral rhythm but to mark grammatical relationships between clauses and list items.

Oxford Codifies: 1905 and Hart's Rules

The Oxford comma first gained formal recognition in 1905 when Horace Hart, Printer to the University of Oxford, published the first public edition of Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers. This rulebook prescribed the use of the serial comma for clarity and precision and in doing so created a punctuation legacy. Its principles have been carried forward and expanded upon for over a century, including in New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (2014), found in ProQuest One Literature, which continues to serve as the authoritative style guide for Oxford University Press.

Academic Style vs. Journalistic Brevity: An Interloper Arrives

Throughout the 20th century, historical periodical archives show that the Oxford comma became a clear marker of academic and literary style whose divergence played out in print. Historic articles from The Times Literary Supplement and The Atlantic, available via Historical Periodicals Collection, reveal linguists and scholars fiercely defending or dismissing the comma.

Debates were also going on outside of literary circles as newsrooms, and some schoolrooms, resisted the comma's inclusion in favor of brevity. A 1984 Tampa Tribune article entitled "Teachers and eagle-eyed readers have shed blood in battling over the serial comma" sparked letters to the editor that reflected a sharp divide.

A Comma Worth Millions: Legal Clarity on Trial

In 2017, a punctuation mark made headlines across America. A group of dairy truck drivers in Maine filed a class-action lawsuit over unpaid overtime, arguing that a missing serial comma in a state labor law rendered the list of exempt activities ambiguous. The law excluded, among other things, the "marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution," but without a comma before "or" it was unclear whether "distribution" was a separate task.

As reported in "Serial Killers Among Us" (The Writer, Dec. 2017), Circuit Judge David Barron ruled in favor of the drivers, writing, "For want of a comma, we have this case." The decision led to a $10 million settlement. Columnist Elane Johnson summed it up: "Had there been a serial comma, the law would unambiguously state" that the drivers were exempt. Instead, a missing punctuation mark became a multimillion-dollar error.

Serial Legacy: The Comma That Endures

From early modern printshops to 21st-century courtrooms, the Oxford comma has proven its staying power. Its first documented systematization in Hart's 1905 rulebook, its global recognition through Collins's printing manual and its evolving role in legal, academic and journalistic practice can all be traced through history's trail of documents.

As the July 2023 issue of The Writer magazine put it, the Oxford comma "is a comma with its own name" whose defenders insist on its clarity and necessity, while opponents challenge its economy and relevance. Yet, as punctuation battles rage on, one thing remains clear: the Oxford comma is far more than a simple mark. It is a symbol of how language, precision and meaning collide in the pages we read and the laws we live by.

On National Punctuation Day, Remember This:

The Oxford comma is a 20th-century name for a centuries-old idea: punctuation in service of understanding. So today, when you write, speak, or teach about the power of punctuation, know that behind that one small mark lies a rich archival trail of debates, rules, books, lawsuits and meaning.

On September 24, that is worth a pause.

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