The serial comma is known by many names. Variations include the series comma, Oxford comma, Harvard comma, and the American comma.
Writers, editors, journalists, professors, publishers, and others all seem to have their own individual preferences regarding this seemingly simple grammatical eccentricity. Fortunately, for both sides, there is support from the authoritative style manuals of the English writing world both for its use, and for its omission.
As you may have noticed, I’ve already used the serial comma twice in this post. I am a strong proponent of this piece of punctuation for many reasons:
It closely mirrors natural speech
It reflects the way the mind reads separate items in a sentence
It allows each individual subject to stand on its own (see below)
In further explanation of number three, I will present you with an example:
The top shelf of my refrigerator currently holds bottles of milk, homemade iced tea, pineapple juice, scotch and soda.
Without my prized serial comma, the sentence imparts some confusion. Even if you love mixing scotch and soda, or even wearing the apparel brand of the same name, your brain wants to combine the two terms, despite the fact that I have two separate and distinct bottles of (1) scotch and (2) soda on the top shelf of my refrigerator.
If you do a bit of research on this subject, you will find a greater number of reputable style guides that support the use of the serial comma than you will find guides that advocate against. There are enough quirks of the English language as it is, this doesn’t have to be one of them!
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