DEAR RICHARD: The Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is the comma used before the conjunction in a list of three or more items. For example: “I like to eat apples, bananas, and oranges.” I ...

“It was a typical Friday night at Costco in Corona. Customers, including an off-duty Los Angeles police officer, 32-year-old Kenneth French and his parents, waited in line for food samples.” How many ...

Serial commas made headlines a few weeks ago when a court decided that the absence of a serial comma made a law ambiguous. In this space last week, I begged to differ. But I didn’t have enough space ...

People who care about grammar love the serial comma, aka the Oxford or Harvard comma. They love it because they were instructed to use it in school, and they love it because it supposedly reduces ...

I have finally realized that people’s beliefs about serial commas are as fierce as people’s thoughts on anchovies and reality shows. You either love them or hate them. No amount of arguing will ...

was a definition of a parliamentarian. There are times when you really don't want a serial comma. For instance, in poetry. A very good example is the line from Robert Frost. The woods are lovely, dark ...

Time once again for a visit with our friend the comma. Or should that be our friend, the comma? Normal people don’t really care about the proper deployment of commas, but there are those of us who are ...

I have spent my career navigating between literature and journalism, trying to learn from both worlds. From my training and experience as an English professor, I carried into the newsroom the power of ...

Grammar lovers today were saddened, shocked, and mightily displeased at the news that the P.R. department of the University of Oxford has decided to drop the comma for which it is so justly famed. As ...

Your reader's example - "The $1 million was divided between Mary, John and Frank," is a lot different than "The $1 million was split between Mary, John, and Frank." - is completely nonsensical. It ...