Among grammarians and writers, the so-called Oxford comma has long been the subject of much debate. Some see it as superfluous, while others say it’s indispensable.

The comma – Oxford or otherwise – and other punctuation marks have their genesis in the 3rd century BCE, in the Hellenic Egyptian city of Alexandria, where a librarian named Aristophanes became fed up with the Greek practice of writing withnospacesorpunctuationmarks. In those days, the written word was the record of something said out loud, and the text only “came to life” when it was again read out loud. Without punctuation, you had to read a passage several times to figure out its meaning. To make the process easier and less prone to misinterpretation, Aristophanes devised a system of simple dots inserted between phrases to indicate pauses.

The dots were aligned with the middle (·), bottom (.) or top (·) of each line. These “subordinate,” “intermediate,” and “full” points indicated pauses of increasing length that someone reading out loud would insert between formal units of speech called the comma, colon, and periodos.

The points were not added according to any rules of grammar. Their purpose was to indicate to the reader/speaker when to take a pause between thoughts. This was the beginning of today’s system of punctuation. Here’s an example of how useful punctuation can be.

The Soldier Sets Fires and Runs

The above sentence is a simple example of the value of the humble comma. Here the meaning is clear. A soldier sets fires (that is, ignites blazes) and then makes a quick exit. There is nothing wrong with this sentence. It’s grammatically acceptable. Now take a look at the same six words, with commas:

The Soldier Sets, Fires, and Runs

Here, the meaning is equally clear: The soldier positions himself, discharges his weapon, and then runs.

The confusion can arise because in this case, the word “fire” can be either a verb or a noun. It’s the same four letters but with two very different meanings.

Another example is “Eats shoots & leaves,” coined by author Lynne Truss in her book of the same name. Here, a panda does one of two things: “The panda eats shoots & leaves,” referring to its vegetarian diet, or “The panda eats, shoots, & leaves,” which means he’s a Wild West gunslinger.

I tell my valued clients that in every book of 50,000 words there are roughly 250,000 individual characters and spaces. Each one is important – and they all need to be perfect!