Beer. That’s the reason newspapers don’t use the “Oxford comma,” a journalism professor once told me.
Consider the sentence, “CAWOOD does websites, PR, advertising, and branding.”
That last comma before the “and” is the “Oxford comma.” Editors have fought to the death over the Oxford comma, whether it’s necessary or not.
Newspapers side with “not.”
Proposed heading for the template we use to write creative briefs.
“It’s because,” this professor explained, “over the course of a year, say, taking out all those commas, you save enough space to sell an ad. Then you use the money to buy beer.”
This may explain why I love shortening up pieces of writing. If deleting unnecessary commas equated to a beer, how much better to remove unnecessary words, sentences and paragraphs?
A colleague just sent me a 400-word article. “It’s supposed to be 300,” she said. I think to myself: “Fun!”
Today’s admonition: Be brief. Have a beer.
