Your reader's example - "The $1 million was divided between Mary, John and Frank," is a lot different than "The $1 million was split between Mary, John, and Frank." - is completely nonsensical. It ...

Serial commas made headlines a few weeks ago when a court decided that the absence of a serial comma made a law ambiguous. In this space last week, I begged to differ. But I didn’t have enough space ...

DEAR RICHARD: The Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is the comma used before the conjunction in a list of three or more items. For example: “I like to eat apples, bananas, and oranges.” I ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. You know it, and you love it or hate it—it’s the last comma in a simple series, the one before “and,” “but,” or ...

People who care about grammar love the serial comma, aka the Oxford or Harvard comma. They love it because they were instructed to use it in school, and they love it because it supposedly reduces ...

“It was a typical Friday night at Costco in Corona. Customers, including an off-duty Los Angeles police officer, 32-year-old Kenneth French and his parents, waited in line for food samples.” How many ...

I have finally realized that people's beliefs about serial commas are as fierce as people's thoughts on anchovies and reality shows. You either love them or hate them. No amount of arguing will ...

There's a cartoon about commas going around on the Internet. The first panel reads: "With the Oxford comma: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin." The illustration shows four people: two men, one ...