•March 31, 2021•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

I view Oxford comma afficionados as belt-and-suspenders people.
They’ll tell you how adding a comma after the penultimate item in a list is how it’s done in literature and how it provides clarity (using it even when it doesn’t add clarity).
It’s there, you know, just in case.
Perhaps I just like to live dangerously. After all, I haven’t worn a belt or suspenders in more than a year now, because the elastic waistband on my business casual sweatpants fulfills the mission.
Newspapers generally eschew the Oxford comma as vestigial, but we’re not above using it when it adds clarity to a sentence. What kind of clarity? When it creates an undeniable separation between the final two items.
There are probably as many arcane justifications for the Oxford comma’s use as for its omission.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.