mario ferrer  🌮

First of all, the court did NOT rule an Oxford comma was necessary. They ruled that without it, the meaning was different. There's a difference here — the First Circuit Court is NOT telling us we have to use serial commas.

Secondly: What it (and the vindicated serial comma users) is just not acknowledging at all is that different contexts call for different kinds of writing. That's why we have different writing style guides out there. You're not going to use MLA to write ad copy.

Legal writing is NOT the same as a newspaper article. Any legal journalist or lawyer-turned-journalist will tell you that you should not be using AP style for your legal briefs.

A strong view about the Oxford comma is something that writers like to put in their bio and argue about at parties — it's the "Star Trek or Star Wars" or the "Coke or Pepsi" of writing. But if they're truly interested in their audience, they know that context matters.