Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you're writing or typing and begin to list items in consecutive order, do you add a comma prior to the conjunction before the ...

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 ...

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, ...

It turns out the Oxford comma is a very expensive punctuation mark. Oakhurst Dairy settled a lawsuit with its grammarian delivery drivers for $5 million, which is half the initial total sought by the ...

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 ...

Commas don't just signify pauses in a sentence — precise rules govern when to use this punctuation mark. Commas are needed before coordinating conjunctions, after dependent clauses (when they precede ...

Editor’s Note: John McWhorter teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy and music history at Columbia University and is the author of “Words on the Move.” The opinions expressed in this ...

It's official. People care about the Oxford comma. Last week's column, in which I gave each side its best arguments and observed that I seldom use the Oxford comma, provoked an avalanche of responses.

Does this sentence read OK to you? It's the way I'm wired, I'm not about to change. If you said no, you're right. It's a kind of run-on sentence or "run-together sentence." It's an example of a comma ...