“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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

"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 ...

Maria Kari is a freelance writer and journalist currently based in Vancouver, BC. "Who gives a [insert expletive] about an Oxford comma," asked the Vampire Weekend boys in 2008, shocking many an ...

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 nice to see my friends Nick and Dave in my inbox recently. I thought their questions were worth sharing. Q When listing things, do you put a comma between the second to last item and the “and”?

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 ...

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 ...