This American Comma
Reading your draft I am adding the comma
missing in each instance of a list of three items:
“Peter, Paul, and Mary” and
“orange juice, vodka, and ice.”
This is known as the “serial,” “Harvard” or
(in an unfortunate and ironic appellation)
“Oxford” comma now standard in American usage.
It’s a small thing, really, this tiny extra mark,
Our National Pause, if you will.
It might be nice to use that little spot of time
to consider the price that others paid so we
could choose to stop and enjoy the freedom
of a break instead of mindlessly charging on through
as if at the tyrannical behest of an absent
but greedy monarch.
Could we not in that slight cessation honor
the alarm Revere rode for, the words John
Hancocked, the one silky life that Hale gave
while wishing he had another to spend?
Yea, we hold our English family dear,
but to love the English is not to be British.
Now I have stopped editing after the first page.
If you want to fix the rest, you may,
but if you don’t love America
you can just leave it the way it is.
Scott Whisler
