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?

Check the company style guidem of it doesn't specify make an executive decision and communicate it so all Comms are consistent.

I'm with you op. Oc is pretty pointless in most cases, it irks me when I see it, it just looks like it doesn't belong 😂

Obviously the correct way is gone 😁

I worked for years in a global company, writing software but we also had to write user documentation. The company style guide was standard US SPAG - it’s pointless being little Englanders, like it or not ‘international English’ tends to be US. The exception would be if there was a technical standard for spelling so aluminium never aluminum.

On the specific question of Oxford commas, they’re quite often needed to improve clarity and IME aren’t problematic. There may be hills worth dying on but this one - meh, get over it.

I haven’t read the full thread, but I agree completely with this and don’t need to read any further (I probably will though🤣)

Correct grammar is only part of the skillset of writing. Being able to structure the document is important, likewise deciding how much detail is too much, and being able to stick to a consistent tone that is appropriate for the relationship between the writer and the reader. I am very good at writing technical documentation, such as how-to guides, and am generally good at grammar, but I need considerable tone assistance from tools like Grammarly and have to ask someone else whether I've overdone the detail.

So do I have to take the training in French as well if I want to take it in Portugese?

If you did it would say 'in English and in French and Portuguese'.

Or you use the Oxford comma to avoid the ambiguity, or you use bullet points for the list items.

Training will be provided in these languages:

• English
• French
• Portuguese

And then adding more languages later is a matter of adding more bullets instead of rewriting the sentence.

My feeling is that instead of doing the work herself, she has pasted it into ChatGPT.

I'm not sure whether a copy and paste job is really what the salary paid for a Manager/Director of Internal Communications was intended to achieve.

Could it be that the people sprinkling in the extra commas are younger and not from academic backgrounds such as English or Modern Languages, disciplines in which 'correct' punctuation was considered de rigueur?

Erm, no.

It would depend on the nature of the comms. I'd probably use a bullet list because of the nature of the work I write or edit, but if it was something more conversational, I'd avoid them.

Thanks for that reminder of the Maine overtime case, decided on the supposed absence of an Oxford comma. Not read the full judgement, but to read the law as meaning 'packing for distribution' (as the employer did), you would have a list missing a final conjunction. This makes even less sense when the same paragraph contains a list not only numbered but with a punctuated final conjunction. It's 'packing or distribution', as the judges found. This was a case where an Oxford comma would help due to the two conjunctions, while a single conjunction would have not required it.

I like it - it makes the meaning more precise and consistent. That said, does your organisation not have a ‘house style’ so that comms are reasonably consistent in style regardless of who writes them?

I like an Oxford comma, but I'm also on favour of bulleted lists.

Of late, I have been reviewing a load of technical docs; the fact there are often basic things like fullstops missed means I'm not going to introduce arguments about Oxford commas. I think would be beyond their comprehension.

Could it be that the people sprinkling in the extra commas are younger and not from academic backgrounds such as English or Modern Languages, disciplines in which 'correct' punctuation was considered de rigueur?

I'm not from a languages background. The British people who insist on them tend not to be young and were taught to use them at school, or they know that the organisation's style guide states that they should be used.

I don’t understand objecting to the use of a piece of punctuation that removes ambiguity.

Yes, I often encourage junior colleagues to use bulleted lists instead of rambling sentences but they are not appropriate for this particular communication.

I think, like -ize endings, there's a lot of nose-twitching about it being "American" ... when it isn't.

There is no ambiguity to remove.

I don’t think there was any ambiguity in the examples the OP listed.

Nope. I just don’t like them. It’s a simple as that.

Too American, I don’t like it. Doesn’t really have a place in British English so depends upon who your target audience is.

Out of interest, why not?

I don't like Oxford commas. They're not consistent because they aren't generally used in British English, so even if you use them, most of the comms won't have them.

Sometimes Sales people would decide to have their own style guide when there already was a corporate one. The Sales one was usually 'Grammarly' or ChatGPT-based.

-ize endings are fine if you are using American English. If you are not they are misspellings.