And Now, a Word About Commas
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And Now, a Word About Commas

Spoiler alert: I’m pro Oxford.

Photo by Louise Smith on Unsplash

Was there ever a punctuation mark more likely to spawn arguments than the comma? At its most basic, a comma indicates a spot in a sentence to take a brief mental “breath” — or even an actual physical breath if the sentence is a long one.

The most frequent uses of commas are to either separate items in a list or series (e.g. apples, oranges, lemons, and tomatoes), or to set off dependent clauses at the beginning of a sentence.

For example, this sentence has a dependent clause at the beginning that tells the reader that what follows is a sample of the idea introduced in the sentence directly preceding it.

There are officially a gazillion reasons and ways to use commas, so we clearly can’t try to examine them all. Let’s take a look at some of the more common ones.

Conjunctions

Using commas with conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, etc.) helps join two independent clauses into a single, longer, and more descriptive sentence.

Tomatoes are red, but they don’t turn your hair red.

In the preceding example, the two parts of the sentence are both short; modern publishing is leaning more and more towards eliminating punctuation as much as possible, so if a comma isn’t needed to avoid confusion (like above) you can often eliminate it. If you want to err on the side of proper grammar, then go ahead and use the comma.

Parenthetical Descriptors

In the following example, the phrase between the two commas is known as a parenthetical; it’s called this because the descriptive phrase would look appropriate either set off by commas, as here, or encased in parentheses (as here). The key to recognizing parentheticals is that if the phrase can be cut out of the sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence, then it’s a descriptor. The parenthetical is in bold print.

Tomatoes, while extremely delicious and full of vitamins, are difficult to grow at home.

Commas set the dependent phrase apart from the basic sentence. One of the concerns of using commas with parentheticals is that there can easily get to be too many commas in a sentence. Consider the following sentence:

Tomatoes are the most popular vegetable in America, although of course, tomatoes are actually fruits and not vegetables at all.

This sentence shows the proper use of commas surrounding the parenthetical comment. There is a temptation to put additional commas after although and after fruits because of a natural pause that happens when reading the sentence. However, since that pause happens naturally, and the parenthetical is essentially an interjection or modifier rather than essential information, commas are not needed and should be avoided for the sake of a cleaner look on the page.

Introductory Phrases

Similar to parentheticals, introductory phrases occur at the beginning of a sentence and can be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence.

While extremely delicious and full of vitamins, tomatoes are difficult to grow at home.

Some introductory phrases are considered absolutes and are always set off by commas. Examples include:

Names (when addressing someone directly): Hello, Peter, do you like tomatoes?

(when addressing someone directly): Hello, Peter, do you like tomatoes? Titles : Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights activist (note that the suffix “Jr.” is not separated from King’s name by a comma. The convention of separating Jr. and Sr. from the name by a comma is generally fading away; it’s also important to note that King himself never used a comma before Jr.)

: Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights activist (note that the suffix “Jr.” is not separated from King’s name by a comma. The convention of separating Jr. and Sr. from the name by a comma is generally fading away; it’s also important to note that King himself never used a comma before Jr.) Dates: July 4, 1776

Exceptions (of course) occur for the use in dates: If there is no specific day, there is no comma.

July 1776

Also, when using the international/military/genealogical format, there are no commas used.

4 Jul 1776

Exact place names: Del Rio, Texas, grows more tomatoes than any other place in the US.

Just to mix things up a bit, if the place name becomes a possessive, no comma is used after the name of the state or country.

Florence, Italy’s use of fresh tomatoes exceeds that of other cities.

Coordinating Adjectives

When listing a number of attributes of a given subject, commas help keep the adjectives in their proper places.

The tomatoes at the farmers market are red, ripe, and still on the vine.

VS.

The tomatoes at the farmers market are red ripe and still on the vine.

In the first sentence, we get a clear description of the tomatoes. In the second sentence, we’re not sure whether the tomatoes are “red and ripe” or “red ripe”, which implies there might be other colors of ripe like “blue ripe” or “pink ripe”. Also, “still on the vine” tells us how the tomatoes are presented in the first sentence; but in the second sentence, without the comma to guide us, we might think that the tomatoes are “still” (as in motionless) on the vine. See the difference?

It is this problem with coordinating conjunctions that is at the heart of silly comparisons like:

“Let’s eat Grandma!”, “Eats shoots and leaves”, and the immortal “The bullet is in her yet.”

Oxford Commas

There are more uses and abuses of commas in grammar style guides than there are stars in the sky. But the argument that seemingly will never die is the so-called Oxford comma. Also known as “serial commas”, Oxford commas are those commas that come at the end of a list of items in a sentence, between the second-to-the-last item and the final “and”.

Tomatoes can be green, red, orange, and purple.

The comma before the “and” is the Oxford comma. Lots of American publications prefer that lists like this do not use another comma before the “and” (or other conjunction).

Tomatoes can be green, red, orange and purple.

In a short sentence like this, that’s not a problem — though you could argue that without the Oxford comma, the sentence is saying that a tomato can be orange and purple at the same time.

This distinction becomes more critical when sentences are longer and more complex.

Everyone knows that tomatoes are the tastiest of all vegetables, though the argument rages over whether we should put vinegar salt and pepper or sugar on them.

So, are we saying we should put “salt and pepper” OR “sugar”, or do we mean “salt” AND “pepper or sugar”? Are our choices “salt” plus one of the other two, or are they “salt and pepper” or “sugar” by itself? And what about “vinegar salt”!

An Oxford comma settles the debate.

Everyone knows that tomatoes are the tastiest of all vegetables, though the argument rages over whether we should put vinegar, salt and pepper, or sugar on them.

(My grandma, by the way, swore that sugar was the best thing on tomatoes.)

Note that grammar checking software will vary in what it tells you to do. Grammarly will tell you that the Oxford comma is necessary; Word will not.

This is not a complete look at all the vagaries of comma usage. If you are required to adhere to a particular style guide, then the comma rules I’ve just outlined could be out the window. For the sake of all parties involved, avoid getting into arguments about Oxford commas.

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DRM is the publisher of What to do About…Everything, and Boomer: Unfiltered. She writes in science, mental health, and environment on A Writer’s Mind.