Commas of Mass Destruction: Part 2

In our last post, we got familiar with the comma. So now we are ready to revisit James Thurber and Harold Ross in the New Yorker Office in the 1930s, getting ready to bash the living shit out of each other, and all over the use of the comma.


You see, Harold Ross was a comma-lover. Some might say he was a comma-nist. James Thurber, however, wasn’t so big on them. But Ross was the editor and boss of the New Yorker, so each time Thurber’s work was put in front of him, he started comma-izing it. If Thurber wrote ‘Red white and blue’, Ross changed it to ‘Red, white, and blue’.

In his memoir, ‘The Years with Ross’, Thurber remembers that Ross thought that there was no limit to how much clearer you could make a sentence by throwing in commas everywhere. But to Thurber, they were just obstacles, getting in the way, forcing you to stop and start all the time, frustrating your progress as you read.

So who was right?

Well, first let’s look at Ross’s outlook on things. To Ross, commas were really important to show the reader were there might have been a pause, or where there was a certain amount of omitted information. For example, somebody once asked why there needed to be a comma in the sentence: ‘After dinner, the men went into the living-room’, Ross' answer was ‘so the men had time to push their chairs back and stand up.’

Snap, Harold Ross. But a lot of Ross’ logic was based on the argument of the oxford comma, and so sometimes it went a bit over the top.

The oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is used before conjunctions like or, and or but. For example:

We ate oranges, apples, and pears.

The main arguments for the oxford comma are that it offers consistency with the other commas in the sentence, and that it better matches the way people speak.

The arguments against the oxford comma is that if there is a conjunction, such as an 'and' there’s no need for a comma, because the 'and' is the thing that the other apostrophes are replacing.

Jesus Christ. Now you know. Now you understand why Ross and Thurber couldn’t stand each other for another second. They were stuck in an oxford comma hate spiral. This is why, when Thurber wrote ‘red white and blue’, Ross just corrected it to ‘red, white, and blue.’ Ross always used oxford commas, and it pissed Thurber off.

As you know, MC Grammar doesn’t like it when people use grammar just for the sake of being correct. If a sentence reads correctly without the aid of the punctuation, then you don’t need it.

So do we need the oxford comma? Well, that depends on whether you think the sentence needs it or not. There are some cases where the meaning can get lost with an oxford comma. The author Teresa Nielsen Hayden gave this example of how a dedication can get confusing


To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.


In this case, Hayden has shown how it can look like her parents are the author Ayn Rand and God. In this case using an oxford comma like this:


To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.


Would have been a lot better – better, but not great. The fact is, no matter how many commas you throw at this sentence, it still always reads a bit as though someone's parents are Ayn Rand and God, and an oxford comma isn’t going to fix that.

The other argument for the oxford comma is that it better matches the way people speak. An extra comma before a word like and better evens out a list rhythmically. This is true. Consider this:


This morning for breakfast I had toast, cornflakes, bacon and eggs, and coffee.


Here, we know that the bacon and eggs came together in a sort of package, but if you write:



This morning for breakfast I had toast, bacon and eggs and coffee


You start to imagine a coffee-based soup full of rashers of bacon and bits of egg. An oxford comma definitely would have made a difference here, and more than that, in speech, a person definitely would have paused just a little bit, just after saying ‘bacon and eggs’.

So what happened in the end for Ross and Thurber? Well it didn’t matter how much Thurber screamed and threatened, Ross was in charge of the New Yorker, so he always got his way.

But Thurber got back at him by writing his memoir, ‘The Years with Ross’. Now, everyone thinks of Ross as an eccentric, slightly crazy guy, even though he was technically a genius. The lesson that we can all learn from this is that you should try not to get too hung up on commas, because it can get out of hand after a while. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Columbia University, which has a student group called the Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma. (SPOC).

So what’s MC Grammar’s advice about the oxford comma? Don’t commit to it. Treat it like a casual acquaintance. Whenever you think you need one, throw it in, based on the fact that you would have paused if you were speaking, or because it makes the sentence clear with it. But don’t get into an argument about it, because someone might end up writing a memoir about you that makes you seem a bit anal about commas.

To finish off, let’s listen to this topical tune from Vampire Weekend, where Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend reflects on meeting the Students for the Preservation of the Oxford Comma.

Commas of Mass Destruction: Part 1

In New York in the 1930s, two men had a massive fight about commas.

Their names were Harold Ross and James Thurber. Harold Ross was the editor and head of the New Yorker Magazine, and James Thurber was a humourist who worked for the magazine.

Ross loved commas. He pretty much wanted to marry a comma. But Thurber thought they were a bit more unnecessary. For example, if Thurber wrote ‘red white and blue’, Ross would change it to ‘red, white, and blue’. They could only see one way to settle their differences: with a punch-on.

So who was right? Well, to work that out, first we need to work out exactly what a comma is for.

The word ‘comma’ means ‘cut off piece’, and was first applied to writing back in ancient Greece, to tell actors reading aloud when to pause and take a breath when they were saying their lines. And this was what it was used for for a long time. (During the middle ages, it even had a little comrade punctuation mark called a ‘virgula suspensiva’, which looked a bit like a forward slash [/] which was used for the briefest of pauses, but that has now died out.)

Slowly, the comma began to be used for more than just reading out loud.

Now, the function of the comma is:

1. To divide things in lists

We bought oranges, apples and pears

In lists, the comma is not required before the and on the end, unless you believe in the oxford comma, which we’ll be confronting in part two of commas.


2. To join things in a sentence

When two sentences join to be one, a comma is like the contraception they use to ensure the information they contain stays separate

The sentence: The night was ice cold. There was frost everywhere.

could become: The night was ice cold, there was frost everywhere.

3. To fill gaps of information

For example, instead of saying

My old dog has three legs; my new dog has four legs.

You could say

My old dog has three legs; my new dog, four.


4. To show that someone is about to talk

Such as:

Suddenly he stood up and said, ‘Right then. Where are my slippers?’

5. After an exclamation or interjection:

Holy shit, what am I going to do now?


Jesus, I hate this song


OMG, where did all these lame playsuits come from?

6. To ‘bracket’ extra information.

This is a bit of a tricky one. The rule of bracketing is that you use them to put a ‘weak interruption’, in a sentence. A weak interruption is an additional piece of information. This doesn’t mean that the information isn’t important, it just means that it is ‘added’.

Her dark hair, scented like almonds, was like silk to the touch.

We ate all the ice creams, even the tofu-flavoured ones, that we could find in the fridge.

The girl, Josie, finally spoke.

In these cases, the added information could be left out, but it means that the sentence would probably be a bit less interesting and would offer less information about what’s going on.

7. To breathe.

This is the oldest, and most important function of the comma. It gives you an idea of the rhythm of what is happening and the way people are talking. When you talk, you don’t talk at the same pace, with the same pitch, the whole time. Without even thinking about it, you use pauses.

So when you’re writing stuff down, you should think about when you would pause. As you might have noticed, MC Grammar uses a lot of commas – maybe even more than is average – because MC Grammar always talks in an even, calm, emphatic and commanding manner. Each time you see a comma when you read this blog, that’s my way of letting you know that I am inhaling another strong, determined breath, and setting my steel gaze upon you, so that my eyes seem like two polished tiger-eye stones as I make yet another point about grammar. But do I apologise for this love of commas? Of course I don’t. This is because I know that each comma is well-placed and thought out.

But beware, readers, the comma has the potential for setting off a war of catastrophic proportions, in its mutant form, the Oxford Comma.

/Stay tuned for part two of Commas of Mass Destruction.