How do you feel about this sentence? We invited two investors, Warren Buffett and Bill Gross to our annual conference.
If you are confused about whether we invited a) just two people to the conference (Buffett and Gross) or b) four people to the conference (Buffett, Gross, and two other investors), then welcome to the debate over the “serial” or “Oxford” comma.
Financial writers like to debate whether to use the serial comma. We dive into this debate and explain why this controversial piece of punctuation is a valuable asset to your financial writing.
What Financial Writers Need to Know About the Serial Comma
The “serial” or “Oxford” comma is the punctuation that follows the final conjunction in a list of three or more things. As you can see, the italicized sentence above does not include the serial comma after “Buffett.”
This tiny mark sparks oversized reactions: people either love it or loathe it. It is fairly popular in the United States, but rarely used in the United Kingdom. The Chicago Manual of Style approves; the AP Stylebook shuns. My eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Albers, taught us to use it; my high school English teacher, Mrs. Purvis, taught us not to use it.
TEDTalks offers an amusing animated look at the serial comma’s pros and cons. A poll from FiveThirtyEight.com shows that Americans are roughly evenly split for and against the serial comma.
WFC’s Take on the Serial Comma
At Wentworth Financial Communications, we are not ambivalent about the serial comma. We are strongly in favor of it. Why? Because, for example, by adding it to our sentence about the investors, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gross, it removes any confusion about how many people we are inviting to the conference.
We invited two investors, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gross to our annual conference.
Regardless of whether your firm uses the serial comma or not, one thing is not up for debate: you have to be consistent. You should either always use it or never use it.
At WFC, we help financial services firms and law firms improve their writing, regardless of whether they agree with us about the serial comma. To receive more writing tips like this, sign up for our monthly newsletter, Return On Content, or contact us (@WFC_Writing) to learn more about our approach to financial writing and financial services content marketing.
About th
e Author: Scott Wentworth is the founder and head financial writer of Wentworth Financial Communications. Over his nearly 15-year career as a marketing writer and ghostwriter for the financial services industry, Scott estimates that he has used approximately 98,125 serial commas in white papers, newsletters, blogs, (make that 98,126!) and other forms of content marketing that he has written for financial services firms and law firms.