Let me start by saying that I’m not a fan of the Oxford comma. To me, it’s one comma too many. And I subscribe to the view Mark Twain probably didn’t actually express, even though many will swear he did: “As to the comma, when in doubt, leave it out.”
All that said, commas are a vital part of our communication. They provide clarity to the written word and, on occasion, help elevate it to poetry. Even as we speak, though, texting is killing the comma.
To be fair, it probably started with email.
“Dear Bob,” (a traditional letter salutation, with comma) became “Hi, Bob—” (a friendlier approach, in keeping with the less formal format of emails over letters and still using an appropriate comma to separate the salutation from the name). But then the comma was jettisoned, and “Hi Bob—” became standard. I resisted at first, but eventually adopted it to stay at the cool kids table. Even the staid Chicago Manual of Style caved, deciding that “e-mails aren’t formal, and that there’s little harm in streamlining for the sake of efficiency.”
But in the broader abandonment of the comma, that “sake of efficiency” argument doesn’t hold water. Sure, everywhere you look—on the subway, walking down the street, at restaurant tables with other diners—you see people hunched over their phones, thumb-typing furiously. It would make sense that saving keystrokes would be good. Except. There are always enough extra keystrokes to LOL or declare OMG. Or to overpopulate the world with herds of redundant exclamation points.
It’s those broader abandonments of the comma that trouble me. The ones that make something just plain grammatically wrong, that make me shave off IQ points for people even though I know how smart they really are. “Thanks for all your hard work Dave.” Without the comma between work and Dave, “hard work Dave” becomes a thing—“You want it done right now? Go see that guy. He’s a real hard work Dave.”
Maybe it’s okay that texts are intentionally more casual in their use of commas—and punctuation in general. It’s as much about style and attitude as it is efficiency. A recent study even reports that, as New York magazine put it, only jerks end their texts with a period. The problem is that, like farmed salmon, this deliberate dumbing down of communication is escaping the confines of texting and polluting the general population—emails, business letters, websites‚Ķ Stripped-down punctuation is even popping up in published fiction, to great effect when done right, I’ll admit. But it only works because it’s pushing back against established norms. Take those norms away and it’s not shocking. It’s just less.
Language evolves. I get that. Obsolete words are replaced by newly relevant ones. Structure changes, adapts. But commas are still needed. Besides clarity, they help create rhythm in our writing—and in our speaking. They add to the music of language. Don’t let texting do them in.
By the way, the illustration for this post is by El√©na Potter, a colleague and talented designer here at 88 Brand Partners. “Thanks for all your hard work, El√©na.”