Watch: How good is your grammar? A TikTok video explains the uses of the Oxford comma
At least it has sparked off a social media on grammar.
You, could, be, a, grammar, rebel, and, insert, a, comma, wherever, you, like – but, trust us, those won’t make for very readable sentences.
A short TikTok video on the appropriate usage of Oxford or serial commas has gone viral – with social media users hotly debating grammar rules and sentence construction in series of well-punctuated tweets.
A punctuation device most commonly used to deliver a small pause or separate clauses or objects, the use of the comma is governed largely by eight rules.
However, it is the Oxford comma – a comma inserted after ‘and’ or ‘or’ when separating three or more objects – that has, in recent times, been the subject of a lot of contention. TikTok user Keisei Satterfield disputes all contention on the comma, however, using the sentence, “I thanked my parents, Batman, and Superman”, (the correct form), which is different from, “I thanked my parents, Batman and Superman”, (the incorrect form).
Naturally, the video elicited great many online arguments on the uses of the grammar that really appear to have no full stop.