Blake’s suggestions for fixing the superhero sentence are hardly improvements, though.

For starters, he says, “The example could be changed to ‘I thanked my parents — and Batman and Superman.’” To condemn the Oxford comma by reason of its being “never elegant” or interfering “with good composition,” only to suggest an em dash as a remedy is self-defeating. An em dash? Talk about “interrupt[ing] the flow of a beautiful passage.” If ever there were a crutch for bad writing, it is the em dash.

Further, he offers, “I thanked my parents. I also thanked Batman and Superman,” as a preferable construction, shortly after saying we should get rid of the Oxford comma the same way “we omit unnecessary words.” If nixing the Oxford comma results in less-concise writing, I reject the idea that the mark is inimical to good composition.

For instance, in a Maine case involving dairy delivery drivers, a missing Oxford comma came with a $5 million price tag over a state labor law. Under the rule, certain tasks were excepted from receiving overtime pay, and the law read as follows:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.

Absent a comma, “packing for shipment or distribution” reads easily as a single task, and when the drivers argued they should not be excluded from overtime pay because they did not do any packing, their employers didn’t have a leg, or a comma, to stand on. The drivers received a $5 million settlement for uncompensated overtime, all over simple comma. It doesn’t seem so “superfluous” now, does it? //

by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I’ve realized that isn’t the message the writer intended to communicate, but by then I’m probably rewinding to re-read the sentence under new contextual enlightenment. //

“The good writer is the standard” of good writing, says Blake. I couldn’t agree more, which is why I firmly favor punctuation that aids in clarity, conciseness, and composition: three marks of a good writer, all separated by commas.