What Is Oxford Used For?

By India Today Web Desk: An Oxford comma, often called a serial comma, is a punctuation that is used while you are listing things. The oxford comma is used at the end of a list to distinctly separate the items of the list.

What is Oxford comma how it is used?

The Oxford (or serial) comma is the final comma in a list of things. For example: Please bring me a pencil, eraser, and notebook. The Oxford comma comes right after eraser. The use of the Oxford comma is stylistic, meaning that some style guides demand its use while others don’t.

Is the Oxford comma still used?

The short answer: No. Many writers, including journalists, live by the Associated Press stylebook. AP style does not use Oxford commas. However, Chicago style does require Oxford commas.

Is Oxford comma used with or?

So what is the Oxford comma? Well, appropriately enough, the Oxford Dictionary has the answer. The proper definition of the Oxford comma is “a comma used after the penultimate item in a list of three or more items, before ‘and’ or ‘or’.” For example: “Today I went to lunch with my roommates, Tom, and Molly.”

Why is the Oxford comma called that?

The Oxford comma is the final comma that comes before the conjunction in a list of three or more items. Its name comes from the Oxford University Press (OUP), where for over a century it has been standard in the Oxford Style Manual.

Why are people against Oxford comma?

Many opponents of the Oxford comma claim that it makes a piece of writing sound more pretentious and stuffy, and that it can make things seem cluttered and redundant. Many magazine publishers renounce its use as well, because sentences loaded with commas take up valuable page space.

Why do Americans use Oxford comma?

British and American English both use the Oxford comma like this, but they differ on when it is used: Typically, in British English, we only use an Oxford comma when a list would be unclear without one, such as in the example sentence above. In American English, it is often standard to use an Oxford comma in lists.

Who uses Oxford comma and who doesn t?

AP Style writing requires the use of the Oxford Comma. Someone who would typically write in AP style is a newspaper reporter. The Oxford Comma is the final comma in a list of three or more things in a sentence, which goes before the “and” or “or” in a sentence.

Who got rid of the Oxford comma?

(3) Perishable foods. So now we get to replace Oxford comma pedantry with semicolon pedantry. The change, sponsored by Senator Andre Cushing, was among dozens of legislative tweaks signed by the governor in June.

Is not using Oxford comma wrong?

Are Oxford commas grammatically correct? Contrary to what most students believe, the Oxford comma isn’t grammatically correct. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to use it. Instead, it’s grammatically optional.

Do British people use Oxford comma?

Despite being named after a British University, the Oxford comma (the comma used before “and” in lists (e.g., I like wookies, ewoks, and droids)) is not considered standard in UK English because only one style guide (Oxford) recommends it.

Can you start a sentence with but Oxford?

‘. Your high school English teacher probably told you never to begin a sentence with a coordinating conjunction like ‘and’ or ‘but’. They may have said it was sloppy or lazy or just bad grammar. But it’s actually just fine — and it can make your writing easier to read.

When did the Oxford comma become a thing?

The big shift in this thinking came in 1905, when a printer named Horace Hart updated his style guide for Oxford University Press, requiring his employees to use a comma before the last item in a series.

What do you call someone from Oxford?

Residents and natives of Oxford are known as Oxonians. The term also relates to Oxford or Oxford University (adjective), or a member of Oxford University (noun).

Does the New York Times use the Oxford comma?

It is much more widespread in the United States, although American news organizations tend to leave the second comma out (that includes The New York Times, whose style guide advises that it should not be used unless a sentence is otherwise confusing without it).

Is the Oxford comma pretentious?

The blue-blood punctuation mark, named after the Oxford University Press, acts as a social signifier, a sieve for the bookish and studious (and, perhaps, pretentious). It suggests personality traits that extend far beyond punctuation preferences. There are other ways of doing this in your Tinder profile, of course.

Is British English considered proper English?

British English is ‘correct’ where it is spoken, and American or Australian English is correct in those areas of the world. While it might not seem clean and neat to have so many ‘correct’ versions of a language, that’s just the way it is. Of course, all of these versions of English are perfectly interchangeable.

Why the Oxford comma is good?

The Oxford comma is the comma placed before the conjunction at the end of a list of things. For example, in “the flag was red, white, and blue”, the Oxford comma would be the one appearing before “and”. Proponents of the Oxford comma say it’s necessary for removing ambiguity in sentences.

Is Oxford Dictionary British or American?

Oxford English Dictionary

What is the Chicago comma?

The most important is that Chicago “strongly recommends” using a serial (or Oxford) comma for lists of three or more items. This means adding a comma before the final conjunction to prevent ambiguity: No Serial Comma: She invited her parents, the headteacher and the janitor.

What is it called when you put a comma in the wrong place?

Comma splices are a subspecies of run-on sentence; a run-on sentence is when two independent clauses are joined without the correct conjunction or punctuation. To avoid a comma splice you can do one of several things.