Definition:
The comma that precedes the conjunction before the final item in a series: faith, hope, and charity.
Most American style guides (the AP Stylebook is an exception) recommend using the serial comma for the sake of clarity. Most British style guides discourage use of the serial comma unless the items in the series are long.
See also: What Is the Oxford (or Serial) Comma?
Examples and Observations:
- "At the New Yorker, one of the first style rules [Harold] Ross established was the serial comma--that is, 'red, white, and blue' instead of 'red, white and blue.' Here he was following his friend Franklin P. Adams, himself a notorious stickler, and Fowler, who argued that since omitting the serial comma sometimes led to confusion as to whether the last two elements in the series are to be taken separately or together, it should always be used. The usage was occasionally objected to as extraneous and stilted, but Ross held firm. 'The serial comma is important because it is almost exclusively the New Yorker's, and is a mildly controversial thing,' he once wrote to Fleischmann. 'But we're right, and all the rest are wrong.'"
(Ben Yagoda, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made. Simon and Schuster, 2000) - "Most book and academic editors, using style guides like the Chicago Manual of Style, will publish sentences like this: The candidate promised lower taxes, higher spending, and universal happiness. Most newspapers would print the sentence like this: The candidate promised lower taxes, higher spending and universal happiness. Note that there's no comma before the 'and.' . . .
"There are a few cases, however, where we have to make an exception for clarity. For example: The candidate promised lower taxes, higher spending, and ice cream and cake. Without a comma after 'spending,' the sentence would be a jumble."
(Philip B. Corbett, "Talk to the Newsroom." The New York Times, October 29, 2007)
Also Known As: Oxford comma
