The Oxford Comma dilemma: a solution?

To those of you still fretting over the Oxford Comma dilemma (and who don’t read the Comments – tsk, tsk!), the “august journal” Speculative Grammarian offers the following solution: Since the OC appears to present more problems of CrossPondian translation than any other form of punctuation, a solution must be found which satisfies users on both …

Oxford commas (2): Live dangerously – take our poll!

Do you use the Oxford (serial) comma? Here’s a sentence with the Oxford comma: My favourite foods are Greek yoghurt, salted almonds, cheese, and dark chocolate. Here’s the same sentence without: My favourite foods are Greek yoghurt, salted almonds, cheese and dark chocolate. And here’s one where, unless you change the order of the list …

Oxford commas (1)

I was puzzled last week to see references on Twitter to the exotic-sounding “Oxford comma”, a new term to me. It turns out (thank you, Mark Allen and  Oxford Dictionaries) that the Oxford comma is another name for the “serial comma”: an optional comma before the word ‘and’ at the end of a list: We …