Serial commas

It’s not a new product, loaded with vitamins and minerals, and a great part of this grammatically correct breakfast. It refers to the commas that separate items in a series, like this:

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

The question is: Are you going to Scarborough Fair? And which one is correct, the one with no comma before the conjunction "and", or the one with the comma?

Both are acceptable, actually. There isn’t really a rule when it comes to using commas in a series of items like that. Some have argued that the conjunction between the final two items in the series serves the same function as the commas between the other items. That used to be my position.

That’s all well and good in a simple series of single words, but when the series includes phrases it begins to break down. For example:

Some of my favorite comedians are Robin Williams, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, George Carlin, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and George Burns and Gracie Allan.

In this case, you need the comma between each of the units in the series to keep it from being ambiguous. Otherwise someone might be confused by that final grouping of "Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and George Burns and Gracie Allan," thinking Laurel is a solo act, and Hardy and Burns and Allan a trio. Or they might conclude that it’s the comedy equivalent of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

Here’s another illustration given by Sir Ernest Gowers in The Compete Plain Words:

The company included the Bishops of Winchester, Salisbury, Bristol, and Bath and Wells.

Here, as Gowers points out, "the reader unversed in the English ecclesiastical hierarchy needs the comma after ‘Bristol’ in order to sort out the last two bishops. Without it they might be, grammatically and geographically, either (a) Bristol and Bath and (b) Wells, or (a) Bristol and (b) Bath and Wells. Ambiguity cannot be justified by saying that those who are interested will know what is mean and those who are not will not care." Gowers is correct. Ambiguity is never justified. (Well, almost never. I suppose there are literary uses for ambiguity.)

Because of that, I now believe that you might as well use the commas between all the elements in a series, whether it’s a simple or complex series, just to keep things straightforward.

For what it’s worth, The Chicago Manual of Style and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style both recommend this practice as well.

Comments

[cj]

As your primary example you could have used: "cornflakes, oatmeal, bran flakes, and cream of wheat", thereby having the opportunity to expound on serial cereal commas.

[Roy Jacobsen]

I'm disappointed, partly because you think I would sink so low, but mostly because I didn't think of that.

Cruel and unusual puns, indeed.