Interesting discussion with my editor over the weekend. We're working on copy edits of a children's Bible, and I've been deleting commas when they occur like this:

e.g

James, John, and Peter went up the hill....

I was always taught that you don't put a comma before the 'and' in a list, and the editor totally agrees... but for the sake of the U.S market, the house style is to put those commas in.

Nothing I can do about it, but it just looks wrong to me!

Anyone else come across this?

I like the Oxford comma! I always put them in.

There was a very funny cartoon on facebook, posted by Trilby I think, showing that it can be grammatically necessary. I'll try and find it.

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Although I have to say, in your example I wouldn't put it in. That does look wrong.

Here we go.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/oxford-comma-cartoon/

it can be grammatically necessary

The shops I visited yesterday included Aldi, Marks and Spencer and C and A.

Here it's definitely needed!!!

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/HaggardComma.jpg

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I guess I see the point here, where without it there would be ambiguity. But in your original example there is no ambiguity so I don't see the point of putting the extra comma in.

Yes, it's just a US/UK difference of habit - like the US habit of having a capital letter after a colon, which you see sometimes.

I tend not to use them, unless a more complex sentence wants one (or doesn't) for expressive purposes, and of course to clear up ambiguities

We had soup, rolls, fish and chips, and pudding

but the pure Oxford comma it doesn't bother me specially, if the copy-editor insists. Logically, I rather like it - because the last two items on a list aren't a pair, so you could argue that it should be:

Hammers, nails, screws, and bolts.

to make it clear that screws and bolts aren't a pair, as they would be if it was

Hammers, nails, nuts and bolts.

I get much crosser with the US copy-editors who insist on switching my perfectly correct joining comma, to a pair of parenthetical commas, which makes the sentence read quite differently.

But it's all about the tension between punctuation expressing grammar and meaning, and punctuation expressing sound and expression.

Yes, I can see that there are times when it is needed (and I've always instinctively put them in), but there are times (like the example I quoted) when it grates horribly.

Thanks for all the useful input though - feel more educated now! I sometimes feel that I don't know enough of the actual grammar stuff - my ten year old daughter brought home some homework about adverbial clauses and it was all new to me...

That's what comes of doing Sciences instead of English at school and Uni!

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love that cartoon, Florapost! Illustrates its uses wonderfully

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and yours, Jem - lol !

That's what comes of doing Sciences instead of English at school and Uni!

Not that English taught all that much. There's a generation who only know grammar from French or Latin or whatever, which is awkward because actually English grammar isn't the same at all.

Yes, I once tried to learn irish Gaelic (don't ask why - I was living in Australia and homesick for some Celtic roots) and it was totally impenetrable because the tutor kept talking about all the different tenses when I don't even know what they're called in English! I know how to use them (mostly), but I couldn't explain it in any technical way.

They do seem to learn it more in school now. Phonemes and graphemes, adverbial clauses, subjunctive clauses... and that's just in primary school!

The problem I think is that for creative writing you need something more than a basic comprehension of 'correct' and 'incorrect', because it's all about working expressively. And plenty of writers do that beautifully, without every knowing the names for so much as a verb and a noun, let alone subordinate adverbial clauses of purpose. And plenty of would-be writers know all the terms, but have a cloth ear for a good sentence, which is far more of a handicap.

Best easy-access guide I've come across is Oxford Everyday Grammar, by Seely. Makes it all very clear.

But as I was saying on Manusha's thread about starting a sentence with "but", the expressive use of grammar/punctuation/syntax only works because of the underlying structure of 'ordinary' use.

And David Crystal's Rediscover Grammar, which is a bit more comprehensive has a lovely sibling called Making Sense of Grammar, where he explores that next stage - not just the 'rules' (which he's usually saying aren't as ruley as all that) - but the ways they're actually used in real and written life.

The greatest influences on his life were his parents, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.