GETTING AN A FOR THE OXFORD COMMA

State testing starts next week, and this means that I must do the only teaching to the test that I do anymore: Commas.  I don't particularly care if the students can cite every single minute comma rule, but I do expect them to have a working understanding of where commas must be placed in their writing.

One thing is abundantly clear every single time this topic arises: Someone is teaching them the wrong things.

The students come to me thinking that "a lot," "each other" and "all right" are single words (if I see "eachother" one more time, I'm going to scream bloody murder).  They combine independent clauses by putting the commas behind the conjunctions instead of in front of them.  They cannot read nor write cursive, which in this day and age of enlightenment, is damn maddening.  And, to my horror, it never ceases to shock me that students today have near-zero working knowledge of punctuation in general.

Today, though, a ray of sunshine breaks through the darkness.

While working in small groups attacking the list of comma rules, one student suddenly stops working, sits up straight, and smirks.  It is quite clear that the proverbial light bulb has gone off; I can see him glowing.

"So," he states pensively, "what you're saying is that we ARE supposed to be using the Oxford comma."

I'm not going to lie.  This is when I hear that part of the "1812 Overture" where the Boston Pops start shooting off the howitzers.  I am tempted to jump up on my desk and cheer.  Oxford comma!  Holy shit on a shingle, I have a student who knows what an Oxford comma is and, even better, knows how important it is to the purity and precision of the English language.

For the layman, the Oxford comma appears at the end of a series of three or more items before the final conjunction.  It has been lately vilified in the paper media by reporters and editors who can't get a clear handle on the rule, so they gave up on it -- much like not ending sentences with prepositions, and much like the acceptance of substituting any pronoun + the word "self" for the objective pronoun case ("You can give it to myself..."  No, no I actually cannot.)

Not to drive the blog into the grammatical ground, I will say this student causes me to momentarily lose the power of speech.  When my voice finally returns, I say, "You get an A for the day."

"Really?" he asks.

"Yes.  Anyone who appreciates the Oxford comma deserves an A," I tell him.  "You honestly comma truly comma and totally deserve it."

He laughs.  "I see what you did there."

And that, my friends, is how a twelve year old gets rewarded in my class.