A student in my “History of the English Language” course stopped me
after class a few weeks ago and asked, “I was just wondering—how do you
feel about the Oxford comma?” She could have asked about the rationale
behind the Oxford comma (the comma after the penultimate item in a
list—e.g., apples, chocolate, and peanut butter) or about the history of the Oxford comma. But instead, she asked how I felt about the Oxford comma, the suggestion being that a punctuation mark could be meaningful enough to arouse personal feelings.
