Oxford comma dilemma

[HotCrossBunplease]

I have started working on a new project and have a colleague whose job it is to manage internal communications. She is lovely and very experienced.

I am the “figurehead” of the project in that all internal messaging says to contact me, and I am responsible for setting the overall tone and content, so I write a first draft and then pass to her for comments.

She has just come back with suggested amendments to our first big announcement and she has sprinkled Oxford commas all over the place. I can’t stand them. Two instances are new lists that she has added, based on wording that I had used in a different sentence structure. A third is a list that was in my original draft, to which she has just added the OC. As you can imagine, the third one rankles the most!

I really want to point out that my original was not wrong and that OCs are a matter of personal style. I could pull rank and make her remove them but that would make me an arsehole and set our working relationship off on the wrong foot. My sentence was this:

“Training will be provided in English, French and Portuguese.”

which has now become

“..English, French, and Portuguese”

The ones she has added are:

“Their enthusiasm, insights, and feedback have been invaluable”

and

“considering the broader impact of [project] on our clients, our practice, and the way we do business.”

I know that OCs are not wrong. I also know that not a single reader will care (apart from one friend of mine in the company who knows about my visceral objection to OCs and will find it hilarious).

Not sure what I even want from this post. A bit of solidarity maybe?

I don’t mind an Oxford comma but those are all wrong 😂

I‘m with you @HotCrossBunplease and while it’s kind that you acknowledge her OCs are not wrong, likewise your version is not wrong and I would state your preference clearly now or the OCs are going to become the new norm. And one of these days you will explode over it😅.
#pedantsolidarity

I quite like them.

I like an Oxford comma so might be biased, but sounds like her job is the comms, yours is the content and direction. So I think this is her call. You could take them out and say ‘thanks for that, have accepted all the decor the Oxford commas as I really can’t stand them!’, but I’d let it go

Is there no company style guide?

I love an OC personally 😁 so much that I wrote them into my company guidelines!

Isn’t the received wisdom that they are a matter of style?

Tell me more about their actual wrongness, so I can use it!

On the flip side, are there times when their absence would be wrong? I think maybe something like “this week we have eaten sausages, pasta, and fish and chips” needs one?

I don’t understand why those examples are ‘wrong’

I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

I only use an Oxford comma when not to do so would result in ambiguity.

I’m not sure that’s entirely your colleague. My over zealous MS Word SPAG tries to add OCs everywhere.

I do get it being her call, but since her job is to maximise the effectiveness of the comms, can you help me understand why the comms would be improved by the OCs?

There is no mention of OCs in our style guide.

But those aren't Oxford commas. The OC comes before 'and' only to avoid ambiguity.

E.g. Without the OC, the sentence: 'We're inviting the neighbours, Joe and Sally' suggests Joe and Sally are the neighbours.
Add the OC: 'We're inviting the neighbours, Joe, and Sally' implies Joe and Sally are invited along with the unnamed neighbours.

Her comma additions are unneccessary and can be cut. However it is common in US punctuation I think, to add commas before 'and', so she may be adhering to some US grammar check.

Way more fun than my example!

She probably put it into Copilot and asked it to "improve" it. Copilot loves the Oxford comma. If you're her boss, just remove them?

Not my work. It's one of the "classics" that I was amused by years ago and it stuck with me.

I've no knowledge of grammar rules but interested.
For "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God." I would read that out loud as a list, properly. But if my parents were Ayn Rand and God I would write it as
"I'd like to thank my parents: Ayn Rand and God."

Maybe she's shoved it through AI and it's spat out Oxford commas. Or she just thinks they're right.

There is a time and a place for an Oxford comma, but not where your colleague has put them.

An Oxford comma is any comma that comes before “and” in a list.

Sometimes it is necessary to avoid ambiguity, but its use in that way is not what makes it an Oxford comma.
See Wikipedia extract.

If she thinks they are right, that means she thinks that I was wrong with “French, Spanish and Portuguese.”

That is what pisses me off.

Would love to, but I’d have to ask her to take them out though, because she is the one who puts the finalised announcement into the template.

If she’s in charge of comms isn’t she also in charge of the organisation style guide? Ask her!

Out of interest @treaclesone are you Scottish? (Based on treacle scones being a Scottish baked item). I am Scottish too, do you think we have a deeper objection to OCs than the general UK population?

No, she’s not Head of Comms, just handling that aspect on our project. I could ask our Head of Comms though, he’s an ex journalist and it seems that UK journalists tend to be in the anti-OC camp.

Off-topic but I couldn't resist:

https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/50339-the-scone-pronunciation-map-of-britain

Couldn’t you ask your colleague, in the spirit of co-operation and for future reference, if she’s in favour of using the OC as a matter of course? It might prompt a discussion in which you can argue your case!