2995: University Commas

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University Commas

Title text: The distinctive 'UCLA comma' and 'Michigan comma' are a long string of commas at the start and end of the sentence respectively.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a STANFORD SEMICOLON - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

The use of commas in the English language is famously disputed, most relevantly among publishers and academics. This comic imagines that all possible (and some improbable) comma positions in an example sentence are associated with different universities. This applies to commas which should always be present in a list, optional commas elsewhere in the sentence (which have nothing to do with a list, such as after the word "please") and blatantly erroneous commas (which should never be present in a sentence, e.g. immediately prior to the full stop/period).

The Oxford comma (a.k.a. Serial comma or, despite how this comic represents it, the actual Harvard comma) is a comma between the penultimate item in a list and its conjunction (typically and or or), to echo all the commas (at least one) that act as placeholders for the conjunction in-between all prior members of the list. For instance, you might write "red, white, and blue" (with the Oxford comma) or "red, white and blue" (without it). Some style guides, such as The Oxford Style Manual published by Oxford University Press, (unsurprisingly) recommend using it, while other similarly authoritative guides recommend against it. Though even those with either recommendation may suggest its (non-)use in situations where this avoids an ambiguity arising from the normally recommended choice.

One common example showing the need for an Oxford comma is "To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God". Without the comma (as in: "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God"), it may read that the author's parents are Ayn Rand and God. If such confusion is to be avoided, reordering the list is a common way to avoid ambiguity, for example, "To Ayn Rand, God and my parents" is one such reordering. However, the use of an Oxford comma in this version might imply the deification of Ayn Rand.

Conversely, if the sentence was instead to be "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God", with such a comma, there arises the possibility of an assertion that one's mother is Ayn Rand, whereas "To my mother, Ayn Rand and God" does not let one fall into that trap.

In the most common interpretation the example sentence reads (with proper punctuation and bracketed Oxford comma): "Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk[,] and bread."

"Mac and cheese" is a common short name for macaroni and cheese in the US and Canada. When we join just two items together, e.g. to name a compound food such as "peanut butter and jelly", "fish and chips" or "steak and eggs", we don't put a comma before "and". It is in the use of such compounded items, as a singular list item, where some confusion can arise. Alternate forms ("fish'n'chips", "PB&J") can put emphasis upon the low-level linking of the components, the outer list can be rewritten (e.g. with semicolon separation) or the reader can be left to logically assume where such a commonly encountered pairing is not part of the wider list. A difference in conjunction can also help to clarify, as in "A good choice of breakfast is ham and eggs, sausage and eggs or sausage and beans, but not ham and beans", which is unlikely to be accidentally misunderstood (including as options such as "sausage + (eggs or additional sausage) + beans" or "sausage + ('non-ham' beans) + further beans").

However, most of the commas are possible punctuation marks in a specific pragmatic reading of the sentence:

Comma name	Notation	Explanation
Harvard comma	Please, buy apples, mac and cheese, milk[,] and bread.	Emphatic plea, marked by a sub-clause separator. (Note that "Harvard comma" is already a common synonym for the Oxford comma, in its context.) Harvard University is one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States.
Yale comma	Please buy, apples, mac and cheese, milk[,] and bread.	A merchant's plea to their customer, marked by a sub-clause separator. This makes the sentence a sentence fragment but this is not uncommon in speech. The implication may be that the list of items are those for sale or that there is a promotion around those items specifically. Yale University is one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States.
Stanford comma	Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk[,] and bread.	Mandatory separator in a list. Without this comma, "apples" could be interpreted as an adjective to "mac and cheese". Stanford University is one of the prominent universities in the United States. It is located in Silicon Valley, a short distance from the headquarters of Apple Inc. The Stanford comma between "apples" and "mac" is probably necessary there to distinguish discussions of the food products from discussion of the computer products.
Columbia comma	Please buy apples, mac, and cheese, milk[,] and bread.	A plea to buy apples, cheese, milk and bread, directed at a person called Mac, whose name is stylized as "mac". Columbia University is one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States.
Cambridge comma	(Please buy apples, mac, and, cheese being unavailable, milk[,] and bread.)	Valid with a qualifying sub-clause; invalid in the example sentence. Also requires "mac" to be an item of its own, not a part of "mac and cheese". The University of Cambridge is one of the two eponymous Oxbridge universities in the United Kingdom. Not to be confused with other establishments in (or originally in) Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Cornell comma	Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk[,] and bread.	Mandatory separator in a list. Cornell University is one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States.
Oxford comma	Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk, and bread.	Oxford comma is a comma often used in lists with more than 2 elements to separate the last two elements in case of ambiguity. In this case, it is unlikely that there would be confusion as to how to interpret the list with or without this comma. The University of Oxford is the other eponymous Oxbridge university in the United Kingdom.
Princeton comma	(Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk[,] and, bread being out of stock, oats.)	Valid with a qualifying sub-clause; invalid in the example sentence. Princeton University is one of eight Ivy League universities in the United States.
MIT comma	(Please, buy, apples, mac, and, cheese, milk, and, bread,.)	Possible reference to trailing commas sometimes used in programming, which would be associated with a university highly specialized in technology. If each of these words were identifiers, then including all commas would be a valid way to express a list in some languages (though using a period to indicate the end of a list is uncommon). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the prominent universities in the United States.
UCLA/Michigan comma(s)	(,,,…,,,Please, buy, apples, mac, and, cheese, milk, and, bread,.,,,…,,,)	Title text proposal, each establishment being perhaps responsible for both or either sets of commas. Can perhaps relate to rather specific quotation or quote-separation contexts not in common use. The University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Michigan are two more well known universities in the United States.

Depending upon who you talk to, the two establishments referenced by the title text may not be considered quite as prominent or outstanding as the Ivy League universities, or others mentioned here, hence their relegation to title text punchline. But (actual Ivy Leaguers) Brown University, Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania were not referenced at all, for one reason or another; for example, the very idea of a "Brown comma" might more readily resonate with the concept of the Brown note.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[A sentence is written in greyed-out text, with the commas in black and each labeled with an arrow.]

Please, buy, apples, mac, and, cheese, milk, and, bread,.

[The labels are as follows, in order from left to right:]

Harvard comma

Yale comma

Stanford comma

Columbia comma

Cambridge comma

Cornell comma

Oxford comma

Princeton comma

MIT comma

[Caption below the panel:]

The Oxford one is the most famous, but many major universities have their own comma.

Trivia

Randall appears to be a fairly regular user of the Serial/Oxford Comma himself, with the most recent example being in the title text of 2985: Craters. This is clearly out of habit or preference, as it is not required for clarification purposes. Yet it seems he also appreciates the conflicting viewpoints inherent to such a style opinion. He later completely avoided the use of list-commas in a (three-part) list within the comic text of the successive 2986: Every Scientific Field, possibly for rhetorical reasons.

This very wiki currently reminds anyone editing a page that their contributions "may be edited, altered, or removed", which is also not a syntactical necessity beyond adherence to the Oxford styling. Later, in the same paragraph of text, it also uses structure of "…, or … or …", but for different grammatical reasons that are unrelated to serial/list commas.

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Discussion

As Wikipedia notes, the Harvard comma is actually a thing, and synonymous with the Oxford comma. It's hard to understand whether Randall was just ignoring that. It's interesting to also look at how the various commas are meaningful. For instance, the Yale comma here appears to be just plain ungrammatical, you'd never put a comma between a verb and a its direct object; similarly the Cambridge comma and Princeton commas are ungrammatical, you'd never put one after the word "and." The Stanford comma is unambiguously normal and it's not clear how you could have such a list without it (absent replacement with a [Stanford?] semicolon). The Columbia comma is being used to separate "mac and cheese" into "mac, and[,] cheese" which changes the semantic meaning (arguably into something meaningless, but maybe we're listing Apple Computers or even Macintosh apple fruit abbreviated). The MIT comma is a cute programming joke for multiline lists. Maybe there are hidden trick meanings (like MIT) I'm missing. JohnHawkinson (talk) 23:03, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

On their own, few of them are intrinsically bad, in the right context.

• "Please, buy" - valid comma. Prefixed subclause (general plea).
• "Please buy, apples" - valid comma (more specific plea).
• "apples, mac" - valid comma (list-type).
• "mac, and" - valid comma (potentially a conjunctive sub-clause).
• "mac and, cheese" - valid comma (potentially a post-conjunctive sub-clause).
• "and cheese, milk" - valid comma (follow-up sub-clause).
• "cheese, milk, and" - Oxford comma. (Thus invalid, by default. IMO.)
• "milk and, bread." - ...would be valid, as above, except for the sentence ending.
• "and bread,." - Ok. Definitely the worst. (Except for the Oxford Comma, which is still worserer!)

Obviously, combinations of them (or counterpart lack of them, in some cases) can clash badly. Some can work well together, but using ()s, ;s or feetnete^* is often better than diving in and out of sub-clauses in the midst of a comma-bound list and potentially making it ambiguous whether you're diving in/out of a clarifying aside or replacing a non-terminating conjunction or perhaps one of the other usages to which a comma might apply.

^* Or just generally rewriting a multi-clausal sentence completely! 172.70.86.22 23:30, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, no: "and," is bad grammar, except when illustrating a dramatic (but grammatically wrong) verbal pause; ", and" is fine for noting a pause used to divide a list, but it's best to use semicolons in a divided list. IE: "milk; bread; mac and cheese; blood, sweat, and tears". (Again, "blood, sweat and tears", would be atypical cadence if spoken aloud; therefore, the comma.) I don't care what style guides say, only what works well.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 15:11, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

What's grammatically wrong about something like "I drink beer and, on occasion, cider"?

Thank you for the "and, on occasion, beer and cider" example. Looking only at the given sentence about a shopping list, I wondered if the subordinate clause suggestion was edit-mangle or a very strange dialect difference. JimJJewett (talk) 02:34, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

It wasn't "and, on occasion, beer and cider" given as an example. It was "[I drink] beer and, on occasion, cider". Depending upon what comes before the "and,", it might be the same sort of thing, but "beer and, on occasion, cider" probably is intended to mean "... beer (mostly) and cider (occasionally)". Your vesion might be somethng like "I drink beer, cider and, on occasion, beer and cider" => "I drink beer (frequently), cider (frequently) and a beer-and-cider-mix (occasionally)".

(Noting that I've never tried mixing beer and cider, although I have done it with wine and cider. Long story. Though mostly it was mixed in my stomach, not pre-mixed. Probably made me the absolute drunkest I ever have been, but the effects took more time to take effect than those who were deliberately plying me with the drink(s) counted on, so their 'plan' sort of failed... I was younger and foolisher, but so were they! These days, I prefer my beer (typically a bitter, maybe a stout, generally not lagers/etc) unblended in any way. The same with my whisky (single malt, and in preference to whiskey). And wine's fine, but with a meal. Don't really go for ciders these days. If I want something appley, I prefer fruit juice, and if I want something fizzy (not all ciders are fizzy, but most of the major ones are) then give me a Pepsi Max (or something similar - I love the taste of aspartame in the morning!). But I rarely mix anything more than cordial/concentrate and water.)

As to how people mangle/dialectise subordinate clauses, I couldn't say. I think it's grammatically odd to say "Write me!" (for "Write to me!), or to say "lit it on fire" (I'd just say that I "lit it", or "set fire to it"), so there's probably some strangeness of expectations between sublinguistic jurisdictions. 172.68.205.165 15:50, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Also, the cadence of "blood, sweat and tears" has nothing to do with the commas you give it. This isn't a case of marking verbal ticks, with... uh... transcribed notation. Either for official recording purposes or in the pre-scripting of speech for later performance. One is free to nuance the phrase how you want, with or without OC. The main issue about the OC is whether a list (of more than two items) should have each (non-final) element followed by a comma? Or are commas placeholders only for the "and"/"or"s that are omited? (And my opinion is that it is the latter, all else being equal. I apply that to semicolon-separated lists, insofar as I won't end with "...; penultimate item; and last item", but prefer to omit the and (or or ), casting whether it's a list of options or an accumulation by the introductory/follow-up contextualisation of that list.)

But, whichever standard you prefer, there will be cases where it reads wrongly to others. If you're lucky enough to spot it, then you can look to what you can do to adjust the sentence to remove ambiguity. This does not normally mean adding in any old commas where,,,,, you think a Pinter Pause is needed. (Maybe an ellipsis, in normal writing.) The fact that a grammatical comma may be where a spoken pause may crop up is not because the comma causes the pause. The verbal pause is (if not garbled out) caused by the same understanding of how clauses/etc require intoning under the circumstances.

But it is a rhetorical choice as to whether to intone "blood..., sweat... and tears" or "blood, sweat and... tears" or any number of other pausing strategies, as it is how you faithfully transcribe what has already been intoned. When merely listing these in text, your chosen style of grammar is the master. 172.70.160.134 19:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Commas can go in a number of places in lists, and, occasionally, after the word "and". BunsenH (talk) 23:34, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Potentially, anything is possible... I can see how a sentence like "Please buy apples, mac and cheese, milk, and, bread being out of stock, oats" would work, but I really don't see how the commas after "and" could work in this sentence. Transgalactic (talk) 08:34, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

If each item in a list shall be followed by a comma then the MIT comma is quite proper. SDT 172.68.245.206 05:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

The UCLA comma may refer to the 8 clap, a chant at UCLA which is begins with a string of 8 claps. 172.68.205.178 (talk) 07:33, 8 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I thought the UCLA & Michigan commas referred to quotes within citations. This isn't uncommon in literary studies, where you quote articles quoting books. Depending on your quotation style, this can result in a long string of 3-4 "commas" (as in: short lines in punctuation marks). If you place the quote between actual commas, make that 4-5. Transgalactic (talk) 08:34, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

I think the tirade against the Oxford comma in the article is not relevant for understanding the comic. "'To my mother, Ayn Rand and God' does not" is not saying that Ayn Rand is the mother. To express that one should write "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and to God". Thus the ambiguity can be resolved. I believe one of the editors is mixing in their personal taste here. --172.71.160.71 09:03, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Tirade? Hardly. It explains when it doesn't help (and when it might).

And I think you misread. "'To my mother, Ayn Rand and God' does not" indeed does not say that Ayn Rand is the mother. In fact it explicitly says that "'To my mother, Ayn Rand and God'"... erm... does not say the thing that 'To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God' potentially does. (See table below.)

The choice of how to disambiguate "my mother, who is Ayn Rand", as a concept, is another thing and has multiple options. Disambiguating in the direction of a simple list is the contention surrounding the Oxford(/Serial) Comma itself (it is, by definition, being used in the list format), given that some circumstances are most helped by it and others are most helped by its absence. If you're strongly for the OC, you'll hopefully rewrite problematic OCed formulations so that you can use it. If you're strongly against it you should change problamatic non-OCed versions so that you can better go without one. 172.70.85.128 10:21, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Inspired (a bit) by the Three Laws permutation table, a set of possible ambiguations from the straight list...

A	B	C	"A, B and C"	"A, B, and C"
my parents	Ayn Rand	God	"my parents (who are Ayn Rand and God)"	list only*
my parents	God	Ayn Rand	"my parents (who are God and Ayn Rand)"	list only*
Ayn Rand	my parents	God	list only*	list only*
Ayn Rand	God	my parents	list only*	"Ayn Rand (who is God), and my parents"
God	my parents	Ayn Rand	list only*	list only*
God	Ayn Rand	my parents	list only*	"God (who is Ayn Rand), and my parents"

-* - Assuming no other "All You Zombies" and/or divine incarnation scenarios.

...maybe it's too early in the morning, but I'm sure I'm missing other ambiguities I've commented on before. (Without necesarily going into the asterisked territories.) Anyone want to amend this? 172.68.186.105 09:56, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Love it! Transgalactic (talk) 10:14, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

There's additional potential ambiguity if you go with the singular "my mother" as opposed to the plural "my parents". "My mother, Ayn Rand, and God" (with the Oxford comma) could be listing 2 separate entities while indicating that my mother is Ayn Rand, or could be listing 3 separate entities. "My mother, Ayn Rand and God" (without the Oxford comma) could be referring to a single entity while indicating that my mother is both Ayn Rand and God, or listing 3 separate entities. (In a phrase like, "My mother, Ayn Rand and God, gave it to me," the comma after God indicates that it's one entity, but you lose that clarity with "It was given to me by my mother, Ayn Rand and God." 172.68.70.66 14:25, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

What if my mother, Ayn Rand, and God are actually the trinity?172.69.195.87 08:23, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I myself, was fully expecting one of the examples given, to be: "To my God and mother, Ayn Rand". ProphetZarquon (talk) 15:15, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I realize that this comic focuses on University commas, however I feel that some mention should be made about the Walken Comma and the Shatner Comma! 172.70.114.103 10:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

What, do you,    mean by,   that? 172.69.195.106 13:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Here's the explanation: Walken and Shatner Commas 162.158.62.228 11:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Mac and cheese is probably not well-known outside the US (especially not under that name). --172.71.160.115 13:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

As usual, the Brits don't know how to name food. "Macaroni cheese" sounds like the macaroni is made of cheese. But I added an explanation and link to the Wikipedia page. Barmar (talk) 14:30, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't be silly, that would clearly be named "cheese macaroni". Macaroni cheese is clearly cheese for macaroni, and it's simply polite to serve macaroni to have it with as well. 172.71.151.114 14:39, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

By the logic of your second interpretation, "cheese macaroni" is clearly macaroni for cheese. The lexical existence of this separate form of macaroni begs the question: what kind of macaroni goes best with macaroni cheese? The plain kind or cheese macaroni? The answer is neither! The best kind of macaroni to serve with macaroni cheese is clearly macaroni-cheese macaroni. But then what kind of cheese goes best with that? None other than (macaroni cheese)-macaroni cheese, which in turn is best served with ((macaroni cheese) macaroni)-cheese macaroni. This interleaving of macaroni and cheese never ends, meaning that no matter where you choose to stop, you will always end up with a sub-optimal pairing. So it's best to just not eat any form of cheese with any form of macaroni, to avoid disappointment. As an aside, the logic of your first interpretation implies that "macaroni cheese" is actually cheese that's made of macaroni. MelodiousThunk (talk) 12:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

As opposed to 'mac and cheese', which sounds like a particularly unappetising dish made using a waterproof coat.172.68.186.92 15:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Oddly, US English goes the other way with "grilled cheese", neglecting to mention that the cheese should be placed between slices of bread before grilling; in British English, it would generally be called a "cheese toastie". (Until looking it up, I was under the mistaken belief that it was a name for what we would call "cheese on toast", which also involves grilling the cheese, on the toast.) IMSoP (talk) 21:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Grilled Cheese is short for Grilled Cheese Sandwich, and Cheese Toastie is short for toasted (or toast(ie/y) cheese Sandwich. In both cases the hearer is expected to know, either from context or experience, that a sandwich is being referenced (offered). It is possible that toasting has mor eassociations with bread (and therefore sandwiches) than grilling, but either toasting or grilling can be done to a variety of foods, including bread(s).172.70.130.171 23:37, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

A "toasted cheese sandwich" may or may not get the same name as "cheese on toast" (i.e. a sort of "toasted cheese smörgåsbord", or a kind of Welsh rarebit-redux, rather than 'raw' cheese put onto freshly toasted toast, which is yet another option).

In general, if the cheese is exposed to the grilling (and, technically, could have any (or no!) substrate rather than bread) it could be considered "grilled cheese", in a way that cheese enclosed (perhaps nipped-closed, in 'toastie maker' devices) is only actually a melted filling.

But I reckon there's many interpretations of handy "heating up cheese and bread" dishes, and many of those will involve grilling and/or toasting, but not necessarily both. Or either, as "bread on cheese" in the microwave for a short blast can be nice, as can a fried cheese sandwich (and, doubtless, also deep-fried has been tried, but not by me). And with much variation on what any of that might be termed.

...and, if you'll excuse me, you've made me acutely aware that there is extra mature cheddar and wholemeal sliced bread in the house and a variety of means to cook (or not cook) it. I might try an open-topped cheese-on-bread heated up in the ...waffle-maker..? not sure what it is, but it's not strictly a sandwich-toaster and I've never made waffles in it... with the top propped up to not messily press into the eventually melting cheese top. With a sprinkling of herbs and spices and the bread lightly buttered(/non-dairy-spreaded, technically), it'll end up not toasted but delightfully cooked and all melty (hopefully not too much, molten cheese sticking to the roof of the mouth is rather awkward!) and probably raise my cholesterol more than is healthy. And, no, I don't really have a name for it. Adding another slice of bread on top, before 'waffle-ironing, might make it a sorted-of-toasted cheese sandwich, but "heated smorgasbord" doesn't really roll off the tongue (nor does the cheese, if I excessively melt it). 172.70.85.110 05:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

'Mac & cheese' is, sadly, probably more common in the UK now than the proper 'macaroni cheese'.141.101.99.47 08:25, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

'Mac & Cheese' is not even used that commonly in Canada. The dish is more commonly referred to as KD, short for Kraft Dinner, which is the most common version found in most grocers, similar to Kleenex being a substitute for tissues. Argleblargh (talk) 23:18, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to the added red text in the Notation column, but it needs to be explained in the Explanation column. 162.158.90.8 00:18, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Could this, at least in part, be about typography, not grammar and style? The depicted commas are not all the same. Divad27182 (talk) 10:42, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Specifically, MIT is the home of the Rust language, which prominently uses trailing commas after the last item in a list as a matter of programming style.172.70.214.211

• As best I can tell this isn't true? Rust was not developed at MIT, nor is it currently sponsored by MIT. As best I can tell, the only association between the two is an old copy of the book "The Rust Programming Language" hosted under MIT's domain. I would guess that the comic refers to it as the "MIT comma" simply for the reference to programming 162.158.158.97 16:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

ABAP uses dots as end-of-command delimiters. 162.158.202.92 (talk) 06:13, 11 October 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I read the Columbia comma as adding a specification to the apples, that they should be McIntosh apples shortened as "mac". I don't see why the explanation suggests a raincoat here... Kapten-N (talk) 09:12, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

! UNRESOLVED VERSION CONFLICT !

There has been a problem with different versions. I shifted a paragraph, but the version that got saved had 1615 characters less than before. A whole lot of rambling had been removed from the explanation, but there was no version conflict warning and no other saved revision in the revision history. I didn't want to take credit for the changes, though I appreciated them, so I undid my edit, then redid my shift of paragraphs, and hoped that the other editor would reconcile the versions. That didn't happen. I'm writing this note to draw attention to the "lost edit". Transgalactic (talk) 18:28, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems later editors simply ignored my warning. This is currently one of the least readable explanations in the whole wiki. I'm putting the "incomplete" tag back up to fix this. Transgalactic (talk) 00:23, 5 November 2024 (UTC)