The liberal media has recently uncovered the CIA Style Manual, and we are, frankly, in the gravest danger. A matter of national security—the threat of the serial comma—must end. Also known as the Oxford comma, this insidious misleader—like the Cambridge Five—can serve no good role influencing Agency dispatches. Although the Company prudently favors semi-colons, it recklessly “endorses” the serial comma, and this will inevitably result in additional faulty intelligence. The serial comma is the comma that agents of confusion and excess insist on inserting before the and which marks the last item in a series thus [sicly]: The shadowy figure had guns, mortars, and RPGs. Both unnecessary and misleading, the serial comma obscures clear Agency communications, and it therefore puts you and your family at risk.
The problem is that the serial comma comes by definition in combination with a conjunction, and the comma plus conjunction combination signals something else—not the final item in a list. All we need do to signal the last item in a list is, well, to stop listing items. All readers, even the least attentive, most com(m)atose, will see that the list has ground to a halt.
We tend to think of commas as dividers, but they are also uniters, and we should not willfully overlook this important adhesive function. To fully understand the comma’s dual power, it will be helpful to understand the nature of the word cleave, which is a contranym, a double-agent word that means both one thing and its very opposite. For example, when splitting oak, we easily cleave the wood asunder but, if attempting to split sweet gum, we toil as the accursed twisted grain cleaves together no matter how hard we swing the axe. Cleaving is exactly what the cloves of garlic are doing in a bulb; they are sticking together in rather a separate fashion. Divided, the cloven hoof stands. So goes the comma, which both separates and unites.
Conversely, we usually focus on the adhesive properties of conjunctions, but we must also recognize their seperative powers: spies and counterspies and operatives is as clear a list of three distinct items as spies, counterspies, operatives. Observe that you can easily identify the last item in both versions. It is when we write of spies, counterspies, and operatives that we get sloppy. There is just too darn much glue cleaving that last item to the list, dripping messily out of an otherwise clean joint. The comma is sufficient glue to separate the listed items, and the conjunction is likewise sufficient to unite but divide them. (Here we speak exclusively of coordinating conjunctions: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet and So—to memorize them easily, remember the acronym FANBOYS.) Applying both comma and conjunction together to conjoin lightweight list items is excessive.
So, given that, why does the serial comma exist at all? It comes from the lazy Group Think that wants a clean, easy rule like “stick a comma in before conjunctions,” and this “rule” persists because, like a stopped clock, the occasion rolls around now and again when it works well. Mindful of the other 1438 minutes in the day, however, we should strive for operational safety and recoil instinctively from the serial comma as a field agent from the Al Jazeera camera. Careful operatives know that the formula comma plus coordinating conjunction is the way to unite two formerly Balkanized sentences into a unified whole (an occasion calling for strong adhesion and clear separation--a weighty sentence is no mere list item).
How do we combine two sentences into one (retaining their independent identify)? There are just a few ways: with a semicolon, with a dash (which is really one sentence interrupting the other) or with a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction. Take these two sentences as our theoretical models: The FBI agent discovered the spy and The agent arrested the spy. (That, my alert friend, is a two-item list, not two sentences combined into one, hence no comma before the and.) We can combine them into a single sentence with a semicolon thus:
The FBI agent discovered the spy; the agent arrested the spy.
Or we can combine them with a dash thus:
The FBI agent discovered the spy—the agent arrested the spy.
(NB: to create a dash with your keyboard, tap the hyphen key twice and apply no spaces between it and any surrounding words—it is a rude interrupter, a space invader—a hyphen is not a dash; two hyphens equal one dash. You're welcome.)
To combine them politely with a comma followed by a coordinating conjunction, do it like this:
The FBI agent discovered the spy, and the agent arrested the spy.
Remember we could substitute, in this last example, any of our coordinating conjunctions (which you already have memorized) for the and.
Some agents pull the obfuscatory "clarity" gambit, claiming the serial comma is necessary in complicated lists (with the nefarious implication that it should therefore play a role in all lists):
The shadowy figure was well appointed; he wore a dark fedora and shades, a black trench coat and shoes, and a grey scarf and gloves.
This is a three-item list, each item of which consists of a color-coordinated pair conjoined by and. Thus, the last item of the list is a grey scarf and gloves; the final list-making and, then, is the penultimate and, preceded by a comma not because we are mindlessly inserting the comma plus conjunction formula before the last item of the list, but because we are distinguishing that list-making and from the other three pair-creating ands. We could just as well write, The shadowy figure was well appointed: he wore a dark fedora and shades, a black trench coat and shoes, a grey scarf and gloves, because a comma is enough, as we know, to glue the items in a list together. If, however, we find that paired items in a list need more glue than single items in the list—if a list of ands requires superior adhesive than a mere comma supplies, then the comma-plus-conjunction formula is the way to go. But it is not because you have arrived at the last item in the list; it is because you have a list of items compounded by and, compelling you to seek a higher level of conjunction.
Another sort of complicated list is the list of sentences united into one—combining sentences together into a single aggregate requires more glue than a mere comma or a conjunction alone; as we have seen, we haul out either the mighty semicolon to do this or else the comma-plus-conjunction super adhesive formula:
The shadowy figure looked right and left, up and down; he spoke into his wrist, and then he scurried into the doorway.
Here our comma-plus-conjunction formula is not the serial comma; it is the sentence-joiner, with the same power to cleave as the preceding semicolon. It just happens to be located as the last item in the list.
Clear list making is the key to serial-comma avoidance. For convenience, a three-item list will illustrate, but really the number of items is immaterial—the thing to keep your eye on is the treatment of that last item in the list.
For stylistic reasons, we could cast this list-bearing sentence in several ways:
The shadowy figure had guns, mortars and RPGs.
We might choose,
The shadowy figure had guns, mortars, RPGs.
or we might want,
The shadowy figure had guns and mortars and RPGs.
Clearly, the comma is enough to hold the separate items in the list together as is the conjunction and. We need not double up our adhesive strength
So, for the same reasons we would be unlikely to write, The shadowy figure had guns, and mortars, and RPGs, we ought never write, The shadowy figure had guns, mortars, and RPGs. And in that last instance, my fellow American, lurks the insidious serial, the so-called Oxford, comma. We want to save that comma-plus-coordinating-conjunction formula for complicated lists of compound items or to combine two sentences into one, thus helping us evade danger: The shadowy figure had guns, mortars and RPGs, so we fled.
“National Security?” you say, “Really?” Yes, really. Pinko Oxford comma devotees continue to spread their misinformation playing the clarity gambit with isolated examples of confused writing to defend their position. Applying some thought to the most egregious of these only reinforces how unnecessary the serial comma is.
Imagine a secret breakfast meeting in the back room of a Hong Kong restaurant where world leaders gather. Jack, a CIA analyst indoctrinated by the CIA Style Manual, is briefing the attendees. He puts them at ease, opening with light-hearted banter, “I had eggs, toast and orange juice.” Has he gone off the rails, causing the great and powerful to doubt his sanity? No. His serial-comma-free statement is perfectly clear, and no one is concerned that he is telling his toast and orange juice that he had eggs. Had he done that, he would have looked directly at his remaining breakfast and said, “I had eggs, Toast and Orange Juice,” madly observing the ordinary convention of capitalized nouns used as proper names. That’s why we write, my mom and dad but, when using those descriptors as proper names, we write, Mom and Dad: My mom and dad lead double lives as secret agents as opposed to Mom and Dad are parents by day, agents by night. We need only observe clear conventions of capitalization to avoid personifying breakfast items.
Again, imagine the Cold War is at its height, the Cuban missile crisis looms. You have arranged a meeting of principals in Cancun to diffuse tensions. You explain who is attending to DCI McCone : “We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.” (This simply wouldn’t happen, but it’s the example we have been given.) Assuming you misspoke, McCone clears his throat, raises an eyebrow. You recover: “We invited the strippers, JFK and Castro.” McCone doesn’t bat an eye—does he think JFK and Castro are strippers? No, he does not. He is burdened by the immense weight of the missiles in Cuba, and context prevents this possibility from crossing his mind. However, if you, as Chief of Protocol, are concerned that McCone’s mind tends toward the prurient, you might choose to express yourself more clearly: “We invited JFK, Castro and the strippers." This is not a problem that clear expression cannot solve—here serial-comma avoidance leads to precise phrasing at a time requiring clear thinking like no other.
It is December 10, 2013, and you are briefing D/CIA Brennan. You begin with the headline: “World leaders at Mandela tribute, Obama-Castro handshake and same-sex marriage date set.” Is Brennan snickering or confused that Obama and Castro may normalize international relations via marriage as if they were Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon? No, he is not. Parallelism deflects this misunderstanding; we have a list of three items, each of which begin with the adjective + noun pattern:
World leaders
Obama-Castro handshake
Same-sex marriage
Here each adjective clearly modifies its noun, and you are not speaking of the Obama-Castro same-sex marriage. If you were, again, context would clearly sort that out. Even so, the problem here is not the lack of a serial comma; it is a product of headline writers who fail to strengthen their parallelism and head off trouble thus: World leaders mourn Mandela; Obama and Castro shake hands; same-sex couple set date. Shunning the serial comma again produces more precise expression.
The serial comma lacks a reason to exist. It is not neat, tidy and clarifying; it is cluttery, superfluous and misleading. Punctuation marks serve as signposts guiding us through the rhythms and structures of a sentence, and the comma-plus-conjunction adhesive formula signals that what is being joined but separated are not listed items but rather sentences. As such, the serial comma serves only as misinformation, which may be why the CIA wants to hang on to it. As we know, faulty intelligence leads to bad outcomes, and this is why we are all in danger. We must destroy the serial comma lest the terrorists win.
