And it is nothing less than fustian to put a comma in before "and" in most cases.

You know what's fustian?

Using words like "fustian."

I hope we're not frightening the lurkers away....

The sad part is, if we made a punctuation thread, it would languish in obscurity, desolate, little tumbleweeds of serial commas and semi-colons rolling past...

But you don't need a generalized rule about serial commas.

Whoa there! Either always use it, or never use it. But be consistent. Lack of consistency just looks downright sloppy and, therefore, poorly written.

Whoa there! Either always use it, or never use it. But be consistent. Lack of consistency just looks downright sloppy and, therefore, poorly written.

To cite wikipedia on the subject:

Many sources, however, are against both automatic use and automatic avoidance of the serial comma, making recommendations in a more nuanced way (see Usage and subsequent sections).

I can't help it if you're rigid and lacking in nuance.

Also:

Use of the serial comma can introduce ambiguity. An example would be a book dedication reading:

To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God

The serial comma after Ayn Rand creates ambiguity about the writer's mother, because the proper-noun phrase Ayn Rand could be read as in apposition to my mother (with the commas fulfilling a parenthetical function), resulting in the interpretation "To my mother (who is Ayn Rand) and to God". (Normally in such a case a writer should be trusted to explicitly include the second 'to' in order to relieve this ambiguity.)

Word order takes care of most problems. "Young Pleiades cited the warping influence of God, Ayn Rand and her parents; then she discovered country music."

In sum, serial commas can create ambituity as well as relieve it. In most instances they are unsightly and extraneous; they are the skin tag dangling off the beautiful ass of a well formed sentence.

That's not a rule; that's a recipe for disaster.

The name of that recipe book is the New York Times.

I will also cite...the University of Oxford Writing and Style Guide!

******

As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’:

They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.[26]

[edit]

Oh, well, if wikipedia says so...

I can't help it if you're rigid and lacking in nuance.

I refuse to be bullied and insulted into embracing sloppy writing over precision.

Snap, Dana!

Word order takes care of most problems. "Young Pleiades cited the warping influence of God, Ayn Rand and her parents; then she discovered country music."

Yeah, but that word order TOTALLY has the timeline wrong!

(Though, yes, country music was the final nail warping my high school years. College was warped by Melrose Place and The X Files.)

I refuse to be bullied and insulted into embracing sloppy writing over precision.

As evidenced above, it's not always more precise. The general application can create ambiguity as well.

Oh, well, if wikipedia says so...

As you might expect, it's a pretty well-sourced argument. However, I did include the example of the Oxford Style and Writing Guide. If Oxford doesn't want the Oxford comma, then I'll leave it to Tep.

When P-Cow's career advances to where he's the science writer for the New York Times, he can twist in consistent agony as his editor prunes all the serial commas out.

I refuse to be bullied and insulted into embracing sloppy writing over precision.

t high fives!

Look, there's room for being flexible, and that room is known as style guides for whatever you're working on. How do you format a note? Do you do Note: or do you do Note  ? What does the style guide say? Maybe for one project, it's a colon. Maybe for the other, two non-breaking spaces following the bold. Either way looks snappy and professional, so long as it's the same way throughout your docset, dude.

Same with disputed punctuation guidelines. Pick it and stick it. If it doesn't work for the next project to do it the way you did for the last, switch it, but for the love of all that is holy and I am including Hall & Oates in that, be consistent.