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Krauthammer, the Serial Comma[,] and the Wit of the Staircase
In Things That Matter, Charles Krauthammer declares war on the comma in general, and the serial comma (“…whether you write a,b, and c rather than a, b and c”) in particular:
“[Commas] are a pestilence. They must be stopped. This book is a continuation of that campaign.”
This surprised me. Long have I adhered to the gospel of the serial comma. I was trained early to render it “a, b, and c.” This was further ingrained in me when I discovered Strunk and White in college. See rule #2 in Part I, “The Elementary Rules of Usage.” In my 1959 copy, it is on the first page. You can’t miss it.
Placing the serial comma before the “and” has a certain logic to it. I’ve always thought that the absence of the comma before “and” leaves the final two items in a list joined more closely than the other items. This may be the writer’s intent, but it may not be. Most often, in my experience, “b” and “c ” shouldn’t be any more closely linked than “a” and “b.”
However, Charles Krauthammer has earned the benefit of the doubt. Since he is pretty much always right (I’m not sure I’ve ever known him to be wrong) his assertion in favor of “a, b and c” was enough to give me pause to reflect. I’ve been paying close attention since I read Things That Matter last October.
I see “a, b and c” everywhere. It seems to be the house style of The Wall Street Journal. I think NR is still an “a, b, and c” outfit. I must admit, I just may be coming around to Krauthammer’s position. I think “a, b and c” has a cleaner look. This is a radical change for me. (I once threw a fit when some marketing people used “a, b and c ” in the copy on my medical group’s website.)
Am I going mad? Am I so crazed with Krauthammer-worship that I have recklessly discarded my principles? Or is he right?
Alas, I had the chance to mention this to him last week when I met him at a reception before a talk he gave in Oklahoma City. I fell victim to what I have elsewhere seen Krauthammer call l’esprit de l’escalier, or “the wit of the staircase” (the feeling of thinking of a witty comment or riposte, but only as you are on the staircase leaving the dinner party). I just had a few seconds, so it would have only been one line, something like “You’ve turned me against the serial comma,” but it would have been better than the nonplussed stupid blank smile I displayed as I sat down to have my picture taken with him. Fortunately, he rescued my dad and me by asking us our names. We told him, and he said, “So you guys are brothers, right?” (I’m 39; my dad is 76.)
I also could have mentioned that he turned me on to Borges…or that my wife was PO’d at me because she was sick at home on the couch and CK wasn’t going to be on Special Report.
It was an unbelievably great talk, by the way. He’s the best we have.
Published in General
One more thought: of all our punctuation problems, the comma is the least of it. Semi-colons, long dashes, and especially exclamation points are subject to far greater abuse.
Likewise, the failure to use enough periods leads to long, incomprehensible sentences (not all long sentences are bad, but they require good writing). The late James Kirkpatrick, in his excellent book on writing, recalled a note sent to him by one of his editors:
This is a wonderful book; I have given it to several teenaged grandchildren (one per family) and there is even an edition for young children!
But you have to be careful about over-reliance on commas. In fact you can read the first example as referring to three companions, or referring to two. ‘a maid’ can be taken as a parenthetical description of Betty, while ‘a cook’ is a second person. As Fowler used to say, sometimes it’s best to just recast a sentence entirely than to try to rescue it with commas.
a, b and c (which is what we learned in law school, opposed to everything I learned in English class or when reading) being preferred to a, b, and c is roughly like equating (2×4) + 6 being the same as 2 x (4+6).
I revere Dr. Krauthammer, bnut find him to be dead wrong here.
This is off-topic, but I wanted to second the kudos for Powerline’s layout. You can see posts without even scrolling down!
I grew up with the Oxford comma. In college, we were told that the comma was overused but there were still some ironclad rules, including the Oxford comma. During law school, it was beaten out of me UNLESS it was needed for clarity.
Above all, I was taught to be consistent and to use commas for rhythm and clarity. So, in time, I left out the comma unless it was needed for clarity or rhythm. Then, an editor friend kept sticking the commas back in and driving me crazy. She didn’t go to graduate school and was 10 years older than I, so we decided it was a generational/law thing.
Then my classics and linguistics educated daughter sent me countless examples of WHY you NEED the OXFORD comma–some of the misunderstandings from eliminating it are hilarious–and thus, I have reinstated it.
I just wrote a similar comment about nixing the Oxford comma in law school–so glad to know I wasn’t imagining that.
Lovely thread; I’m enjoying it tremendously.
I’ve been writing and editing for 25 years in a British-English environment, and I agree with several commenters above on the issue of punctuation/quotation mark placement. The British method makes sense; the American method doesn’t.
I’m also a convert to the Oxford comma, after having been taught in school to omit it.
I’ve also noticed, however, that Brits seem even more likely than Americans to omit commas that improve sentence rhythm and style. I don’t know why this is. I also don’t know why, at least in my experience, Australia is the most reluctant nation when it comes to using commas. I’ve worked with numerous Aussie writers who’ve treated commas as actively toxic.
Any Aussie readers care to comment on your writing instruction? Were you encouraged to omit commas because it would make your writing more ‘streamlined’?
Krauthammer is nearly always right (meaning: he agrees with me), but nobody is always right;))
Serial commas are often a good idea because they promote clarity, but I think they reek of obsessiveness in phrases like “red, white, and blue”.
As to other uses of commas: I find that I admire good prose that doesn’t lard sentences with lots of commas in an effort to clarify a complex structure that an attentive reading should find clear enough as it is. Midge Decter comes to mind, as does James Bowman in The New Criterion.
Having to pick sides in a disagreement between Krauthammer and Buckley is the mother of all catch-22’s. I’m with WFB, here; commas are our friends.
On a side note: Has anyone else, upon learning what a semicolon is actually used for, found that they suddenly want to use them whenever possible?
I quote from Christopher Lasch’s Plain Style: A Guide To Written English:
I will stick with Strunk, White, and Lasch.
I have long been a follower of James Kilpatrick. I loved his newspaper columns in which he encouraged writing that falls “trippingly on the tongue.” Is the book you speak of, The Writer’s Art, co-authored by WFB?
I agree that British punctuation is more logical, but–being an American–it just looks wrong to me. On that issue, we’re stuck with what we have. I prefer British spelling for “or”/”our” words: colour and honour just look better to me. Also, “centre” is better than “center.”
On Mr. T’s last point, I agree. Exhibit A is the beautiful flowing prose of C. S. Lewis, but there are many more good examples. We still have much to learn out in the colonies.
I was trained using the AP Stylebook, which forbids use of the serial comma unless necessary for clarity. Like most AP style conventions, this was originally done to save limited space and reduce the time spent setting up hot type. Being a minimalist, I think less typography is usually better.
TR, I agree fully w/r/t Lewis’s prose style: it’s a standard to which I could only presume to aspire. But on the whole I think the Brits (and the Aussies!) have gone too far in ‘streamlining’. You can streamline all you like if you’re a writer of Lewis’s caliber, but many of the authors I work with (in educational publishing) are less effective when they omit useful commas. I find myself adding plenty of the little guys to try to promote optimal clarity. The students who’ll be reading the material I work on are mostly second-language English speakers, and they can use all the help I can give them in making the most of what they’re reading.
Oh, and while we’re compiling editors’ wish lists: I wish the USA had adopted -ise endings! In British English every such verb is consistent in its ending; in American English we must constantly distinguish the ‘exercises’ from the ‘organizes’.
I mean, is it even possible to get a decent eel pie in Houston? I think not!
;-)
I did not know that.
I learned something today!
Oh my goodness, yes. Once I learned how to use them properly I started using them incessantly.
I appreciate the promotion to the home page. There have been lots of thoughtful comments. My wife, however, pointed out that my name is misspelled on the headline. I had not even noticed. It’s no big deal. I only use my real name because I failed to think of a cool nom de web when I joined. Maybe this is my cue to come up with one.
No! Don’t do it! There are few enough of us who use their real names.
My problem is that I can think of all kinds of cool pseudonyms — and I can remember with embarrassment all the pseudonyms I thought were cool not too long ago.
If everyone wrote with Hemingway’s dry, concise minimalism, our literature would be as stale as a nest of skyscrapers. I prefer cathedrals and old picket fences.
You should see the state of my copy; it’s bent and stained and weathered. It has sat at my bedside for years, and has been a handy coffee coaster on more than one occasion. It’s a lousy cure for insomnia, but so entertaining I don’t mind.
About the only book that looks worse is “This is My God” by Herman Wouk. I had the opportunity to have him autograph it a few years ago; my mother was horrified that I let the author see it in such a state. The author, however, was gratified.