I'm ploughing through this software program to see what's on it and there's a video of a teacher demonstrating the word punctuation with 'A, B, and C' written on a whiteboard next to her. I pointed out to the petegogy guy that there was one to many commas. Dismissed to do my own research I came upon the Oxford comma. That's a comma after the penultimate word when listing. I thought it was A, B and C. (one comma)
Apparently a whole swathe of academic institutions have this as the norm (almost entirely American). Outrageous!
Such a comma should only be used for the avoidance of doubt. As in "The dance pairs are, Bob and Sandra, Peter and Jane, and Simon and Sue. Furthermore how can this be right - I went with Bob, a teacher, and Sue (is Bob a teacher?). How can it be universally true? A, B, and C my Rs.
Down with the Oxford Comma
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