monkey nonsense

one of my friends noticed that i don’t use commas in a list of three. for example… “my favorite animals are monkeys, dogs and cows.” not… “my favorite animals are monkeys, dogs, and cows.”

i remember learning specifically NOT to put commas after the “and.” but i also remember later on in high school and college, everyone had the commas after the “and” and i wondered if i should also.

from the Rules of Comma Usage webpage:

Use a comma to separate the elements in a series (three or more things), including the last two. “He hit the ball, dropped the bat, and ran to first base.” You may have learned that the comma before the “and” is unnecessary, which is fine if you’re in control of things. However, there are situations in which, if you don’t use this comma (especially when the list is complex or lengthy), these last two items in the list will try to glom together (like macaroni and cheese). Using a comma between all the items in a series, including the last two, avoids this problem. This last comma—the one between the word “and” and the preceding word—is often called the serial comma or the Oxford comma. In newspaper writing, incidentally, you will seldom find a serial comma, but that is not necessarily a sign that it should be omitted in academic prose.

do you put commas after the “and?”

This entry was posted on Friday, September 16th, 2005 at 1:16 pm and is filed under Nerdy Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.