**The Oxford Comma is not _always_ necessary, but it is most definitely not an aberration.** The Oxford Comma is often passionately defended with examples of the following sort: - _The most inspiring figures in my life are my parents, Greta Thunberg and Mahatma Gandhi._ Of course, common sense might dictate that Greta and Gandhi cannot be my parents. It remains, however, that that is what has been implied grammatically, and a less contrived example might result in genuine confusion: - In 2018, [Oakhurst Dairy agreed to a settlement of 5 million USD](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.html) because the lack of an Oxford Comma in Maine Law's payment exemptions resulted in truck drivers losing out on four years of overtime pay. - The sentence, reading - _"The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of [...]_" - describes the exemptions. It omitted a Comma before the final 'or'. - Did the law exempt payment for hours spent on _packing_ for shipment and distribution, or packing only for shipment alongside the _distribution_ itself of the elements listed later? - It turns out that the intended meaning was the latter, and the lack of an Oxford Comma allowed readers to assume the former. Drivers, in this manner, could be led to believe that they would be compensated for hours spent on distribution - which they were not. Interestingly, the amended law still does not include an Oxford Comma. Instead, each comma was replaced with a semicolon - adding an additional semicolon where the Oxford Comma might have been. An alternative solution might have also been to reorganise the list so that 'packing for shipment' and 'distribution of' are separated by commas between elements, and letting a less ambiguous element take the final place. In this case, [one might argue](https://www.dailycal.org/2020/02/28/the-case-against-the-oxford-comma/) that the Oxford Comma is redundant; however, the existence of more than one way to organise a sentence is not a sign of redundancy, but grammatical variety. There are better ways and preferred ways to order and present information. - In the Oakhurst case, again, [the elements listed after "distribution" are bulleted](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/09/us/oxford-comma-maine.html). Reorganizing the list might have made it more tedious to read. - Replacing the comma with semicolons served the same purpose as the Oxford Comma, but clashes with the use of semicolons at the ends of the bullet points. This is admittedly a pedantic argument because, again, an educated reader is not likely to assume that the bulleted elements are part of the preceding list. But, again, it remains that the Oxford Comma could have been a better choice stylistically. In the [New York Times](https://afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/faqs-on-style-2), the Oxford Comma is used in "cases where a sentence would be awkward of confusing without it," with its style guide citing the following example: - _Choices for breakfast included oatmeal, muffins, and bacon and eggs._ In this case, the Comma seems to be used more to better organise the listing of elements than to avoid any confusing association between proper and improper nouns (as in the 'parents' example above). It avoids the cumbersome-sounding 'double and' by recognising the compound association in 'bacon and eggs'. We could alternatively reorganise the sentence and choose to omit the Comma: - _Choices for breakfast included bacon and eggs, oatmeal and muffins._ But what if you really wanted to end a sentence with a certain word? If something had rhymed with 'eggs', we would prefer the Oxford Comma over a reorganisation of the list. If the sentence flowed with a more aesthetic [meter](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-meter-learn-the-difference-between-qualitative-and-quantitative-meter-in-poetry-with-examples#what-is-meter-in-poetry) with certain words in certain places, the Oxford Comma would allow us to preserve that order. There are instances in which the Oxford Comma [would not be appropriate](https://www.dailycal.org/2020/02/28/the-case-against-the-oxford-comma/) and might _create_ confusion instead. But the Oxford Comma is still not a "grammatical aberration". Like any other nuanced grammatical element, it simply has to be used correctly.