Karen, a semicolon, and an Oxford comma walk into a bar...

Both of them had a great time. See what I did there? Oh wait - you don't get it? Probably because it's the nerdiest joke ever written in the history of nerdy jokes. But this is serious stuff, you guys! The Oxford comma, aka the serial comma, is probably the most contentious punctuation in the editing world.

I'll start off by saying that you can have my Oxford comma when you pry it from my cold, dead, and lifeless hands. Why? Because I love consistency and definitive style sheets (and as we've already established, I'm a ginormous nerd). Deciding that your document will use serial commas means avoiding misunderstandings and even potential lawsuits.

In 2018, a group of drivers successfully sued a dairy company in Maine for four years' worth of overtime pay. How? The company's policy stated that employees engaged in the following tasks were not eligible for overtime:

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.

So, does the law mean that both employees who work in distribution and employees who work in shipment are exempt from overtime, or does it mean that employees responsible for packing at all, whether for shipment or distribution, are exempt?

Yeah, it's a real headscratcher. It's easy to see why it was missed, so here's the gist: adding a comma after the word "shipment" would have saved Oakhurst Dairy $5 million. Oooouch. I'm 99% sure it would have been less costly to hire a copy editor.

But as you can see from my terrible, terrible joke earlier, serial commas can cause confusion, too. Did Karen walk into the bar with a semicolon and a comma, or is Karen a semicolon? Well, if you knew Karen as well as I do, you'd know she's FOR SURE an ellipsis. Ok, peak nerd levels achieved. Watch out for those rogue commas, friends.