(Editor’s note: every item in GwinnettForum need not be on a heavy, major topic. This writer explores a lighter topic, the common comma, for you to give it some thought.—eeb)
By Raleigh Perry
BUFORD, Ga. | With obviously anything else to do except complete many unfilled positions for doctors and nurses and fix dilapidated hospitals and other things, the new head of Britain’s Health Agency wants its staff to stop using the Oxford comma. She said that there are just too many commas.
Perry
The Oxford comma, sometimes called the serial comma, looks like this: a, b, and c. The other style would look like this: a, b and c. Neither style is more correct than the other, it is a matter of personal choice in most cases. You can certainly use either way if you want and I have seen a myriad of articles that have both styles in use.
And: leave comma in big….
Very often, in a publication’s “style manual,” the type of spelling of a word, like “thru street” for “through street,” is used just to tighten the space. Often the proper use of a system of commas is designated. A comma is supposed to signify a short pause in a sentence or separates things in a list of items, like a, b, and c. A period at the end of a sentence is a full stop. There are many other tools that will change the way that you read something. For instance, there is the semi-colon (;), the colon (:) the hyphen and a few others.
A professor in a writing class may state the style that he desires, whereas a professor in another class might not care at all. In reality, it makes no difference and does not change the meaning of a sentence at all.
If you are into writing, before you start you should get a few style manuals or text books on style. A very popular one, indeed, is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. This book continues to be popular, and has been through many different editions. I have that book, but I also have the Chicago Manual of Style, published by the University of Chicago Press. There are many of these books and none of them are wrong, but they might say different things on the same subject.
Strunk was a University of Cincinnati graduate, with a doctoral degree from Cornell. He wrote his book to help his Cornell students rise above mismatched tenses, misplaced commas and mind-numbing wordiness.
Strunk started The Elements of Style in 1918 with a 43 page book, but by 1958, when E. B.
White took over a rewrite for the fourth edition, it now has 105 pages. White graduated from Cornell and worked as a reporter and freelance writer before joining The New Yorker magazine as a writer and contributing editor.
The Chicago Manual of Style, which is used for a lot of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, has over 1,100 pages.
My advice to a writer would simply be consistent. Inconsistency can drive an editor up a wall. (Well, some of them need to be driven up a wall.)
Frankly, I like the Oxford comma.
When you are ready to write, just sit down and write, using common sense. Try to make sense with punctuation. Then at least remember a more serious admonition: use the paragraph often. But that’s another subject.
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