A few weeks ago, I mentioned in this space that serial commas, also called Oxford commas, are a matter of style. So either “red, white and blue” or “red, white, and blue” can be correct depending on ...

The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma, is the one before “and” in a series of three or more: Herman Melville wrote “Moby-Dick,” “Billy Budd,” and “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” It is also the ...

When linking three or more elements, some writers place a comma before the "and": bell, book, and candle. That's known as the Oxford comma (or serial comma). Other writers don't use that comma: bell, ...

Vampire Weekend posed that question in the opening line of the song “Oxford Comma,” from their 2008 debut album. Eleven years later, everyone on the internet seems to give a fuck—many fucks, a ...

Example: I went to the beach, and I got a sunburn. The two independent clauses in this sentence are “I went to the beach” and “I got a sunburn.” The coordinating conjunction is “and.” Other ...

Writers frequently debate whether or not the Oxford comma is a necessary piece of punctuation. In an unlikely turn of events, a group of Maine dairy drivers have yielded the answer: Yes, it is. A case ...

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I stepped down from the copy department of The New Yorker almost two years ago, hanging up my parentheses and turning over the comma shaker to my successor, who I know will use it judiciously, but I ...