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The New Yorker
Culture Desk

A Few Words About That Ten-Million-Dollar Serial Comma

[norris-mar]

By Mary Norris

March 17, 2017

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While advocates of the serial comma are happy for the Maine milktruck
drivers victory it was actually the lack of said...
While advocates of the serial comma are happy for the Maine
milk-truck drivers' victory, it was actually the lack of said comma
that won the day.PHOTOGRAPH BY GORDON CHIBROSKI / GETTY

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The case of the Maine milk-truck drivers who, for want of a comma,
won an appeal against their employer, Oakhurst Dairy, regarding
overtime pay (O'Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy) has warmed the hearts of
punctuation enthusiasts everywhere, from the great dairy state of
Wisconsin to the cheese haven of Holland.

Nothing, but nothing--profanity, transgender pronouns, apostrophe
abuse--excites the passion of grammar geeks more than the serial, or
Oxford, comma. People love it or hate it, and they are equally
ferocious on both sides of the debate. Individual publications have
guidelines that sink deep into the psyches of editors and writers.
The Times, like most newspapers, does without the serial comma. At
The New Yorker, it is a copy editor's duty to deploy the serial
comma, along with lots of other lip-smacking bits of punctuation, as
a bulwark against barbarianism.

[norris-mar]
Mary Norris began working at The New Yorker in 1978 and was a query
proofreader at the magazine for twenty-four years. She is the author
of "Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen" and "Greek to
Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen."
More:GrammarMaine

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The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma, is the one before
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