Brad DeLong believes in the final comma in a series: “The final comma in a list before the “and” or “or” is an important banisher of confusion, ambiguity, and general silliness.”
NewMexiKen used to include the final comma, but generally I don’t now. I am so confused.
DeLong also questions the lack of an apostrophe in the possessive its.
Philistine. (DeLong, not NewMexiken.)
In journalism the final comma in a series is not included, harking back to the days of manual type-setting one imagines–one less piece of type to set multiplied by an entire newspaper would really add up. I generally find it unneccesary to add the comma to the last in a series, and as a rule of thumb, use it only when to do so offers necessary clarity.
For the grammatically obsessed, check out this game: http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html
It’s based on the book, EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES
The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. By Lynne Truss. 209 pp. New York: Gotham Books. $17.50.
The title of the book comes from a story about a panda in a cafe. The panda eats a sandwich, fires a gun in the air and walks towards the door. When the waiter asks what he thinks he?s doing, the panda throws him a badly punctuated book on wildlife: ?Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves?.
(from http://www.quinion.com/words/reviews/re-eat1.htm)
Thanks for the Panda Story! I just had a great laugh about that!