Story highlights A judge recently ruled in favor of Maine truckers because of a missing Oxford comma

John McWhorter: Oxford commas ward off ambiguity, but need not be used all the time

John McWhorter teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy and music history at Columbia University and is the author of "Words on the Move." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) A recent court case seems like a victory for fans of the grand old Oxford comma. To many, it feels natural to write "Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cleveland." But just as one may feel lazy saying "My brother and me went home" rather than "My brother and I," there is a sense that it is more proper to write "Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland," inserting a comma after the item before the last one.

And people advocating for the Oxford comma have a point now and then. If you were a trucker reading that union rules deny you overtime pay for "the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of agricultural produce," would you consider yourself due overtime payment nevertheless for distribution? That is, as opposed to packing things for shipping and distribution?

John McWhorter

Truckers for Oakhurst Dairy in Maine have been granted back overtime pay for having distributed product as opposed to packing it, because though the writers of the contract meant that overtime would not be granted for distribution either, this is not clear when there is no comma after shipment. The drivers' lawyer has successfully argued that the contract appears to stipulate that overtime won't be granted for, only, the packing of things for future shipping and distribution.

But it's premature to read this as demonstrating that everybody should always use the Oxford comma. What happened here shows, just as defensibly, that the Oxford comma should be used in cases of potential ambiguity. The people who wrote the union contract made a mistake, but not in way that means all of us should feel bad about writing "hamburgers, hot dogs and French fries."

We might feel slovenly, however, for writing "I had toast, bacon and eggs and coffee" where one could argue that it's unclear whether the bacon and eggs went together or eggs and coffee did, or "My parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope," which implies a rather stunning parental history in casting those two people as your parents, as opposed to persons in sequence with your parents.

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