The Oxford Comma

Take this simple sentence: "I have invited Guyde, a d.j and a comic to my party". How many people are coming? Just Guyde, who is a d.j. as well as being a funny man; or three separate people.

It would be obvious if the sentence had read "I have invited a comic, a d.j. and Guyde to my party". Or if it went "I have invited Guyde, who is a d.j. and a comic, to my party."

Enter the Oxford comma, which resolves this problem. If we mean we invited three people, we are mandated by the Oxford University Press (a big gun in such things) to write "I invited Guyde, a comic, and a d.j. to my party." That additional, redundant comma makes the sense completely clear. No problem.

Except that there is. Among grammatical purists.

Strictly speaking, a comma before a conjunction is only allowed, and nowhere else, as one of a matched pair acting like parentheses. That is the majority view when you take a poll among all English speaking countries. There is support for the Oxford comma, but it is not universal.

And in an attempt to pour oil on troubled metaphors, it has now been agreed among purists that the Oxford comma may be used, optionally, when a writer wants to, and be shunned when another writer wants to.

We have a correct usage rule which may be ignored at an author's whim. Oh calamity, oh woe. This is the thin wedge of something bad - you see if I am not right. Next they will be telling us that the spelling of words has become optional as well. Where will it all end?

I disagree that this is completely clear. Did you invite three separate people or only two? 'A comic' could still be referring to Guyde. This sentence can't be fixed with a comma. It needs a rewrite.

That second comma in the sentence (the one after comic) indicates to me that this is a series (of three people). But to be clearer that Guyde is both a comic and d.j. in his own right, you could rewrite this one of two ways:

I invited Guyde - a comic and d.j. - to my party.
I invited Guyde, a comic and dj, to my party.

By not using a comma after 'comic' in my second example, it's (sort of?) clear that the appostive phrase 'a comic and d.j.' is referring to Guyde and not two additional guests. Tricky, huh?

I ALWAYS "over comma",
so I imagine that I would have already put in that extra one, to make my point, that 3 people would be there. I am oblivious to all those "comma rules", lol, but the extra one makes sense to me.

I don't know where you got that. A comma appears before a conjunction when it connects two independent clauses. It's one of a few ways of connecting two independent clauses.

Here's a source: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/index.php?category_id=3&sub_category_id=4&a rticle_id=76

As to the Oxford comma, I'm a fan. It often reduces confusion.

-LK

That second comma is the "Oxford" comma. It is used to show three separate entities when confusion might otherwise exist.

Look at "My parents, Ayn Rand and God were important influences on my formative years."

And its near twin: "My parents, Ayn Rand, and God were important influences ..."

The second sentence makes it very clear that my conception did not happen as the result of some mystical union between Ayn Rand and The Good Lord. Hence the push for allowing the Oxford comma to be accepted as being grammatically correct.

Touche - that is a very acceptable usage in some quarters. My bad.

But whenever you read the supplied examples from authorities championing the usage, don't you think a colon or semi-colon does a far better job and indicates to the reader that an independent clause is about to be hit? You might note that the inbuilt grammar checker in Word 2010 always prompts you to change a comma into a colon when this situation occurs in your text.

I didn't invite anyone to a party. That pretty much solves everything.

No, I don't think that at all. I use a semi-colon to separate two independent clauses when there is no conjunction or when the clauses themselves are full of commas. For two simple independent clauses joined by a conjunction, a comma does the job just beautifully. I turned my grammar checker off in Word 2010 because it is a piece of garbage, in my opinion.

I try and avoid Word wherever possible but I have to share your opinion of its grammar checker in all the versions of Word I've come across.