The importance of the Oxford comma:

The NYT also has an article on that case.

I'm a fan of the Oxford comma for a number of reasons, but one is that it lessens the possibility of misunderstanding the sentence. The reader doesn't have to stop and wonder whether the last two items in a sequence are meant to be discrete or a unit.

I'm confused by people who are against the Oxford comma.

For "global English" I always use it because it minimizes confusion for those whose English needs guideposts and signalling.

I, too, have always been a little baffled by people who oppose the Oxford Comma.

Maybe I'm missing some key selling point, but it seems to be like on the 'for' side you've got a significant reduction in ambiguity, while on the 'against' side you've got... what exactly? Slightly smoother sentence flow?

TomFoskett said:

I, too, have always been a little baffled by people who oppose the Oxford Comma.

Maybe I'm missing some key selling point, but it seems to be like on the 'for' side you've got a significant reduction in ambiguity, while on the 'against' side you've got... what exactly? Slightly smoother sentence flow?

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It saves ink.

It is possible to introduce ambiguity by means of an Oxford comma. Taking Maryn's third sentence above:

Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector

If you add the Oxford comma in, you remove Mr Mandela's dildo collection from consideration, but then the phrase an 800-year-old-demigod could be an appositive describing the famous South African.

Basically, you should check your comma-delimited series for the possibility that they can be misread as appositives. Both of the below sentences are unclear.

I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
I would like to thank my mother, Mother Theresa, and the Pope

Sometimes the best solution is to rephrase; sometimes it's to add or remove a comma.

That's a good point with appositives. If only bullet points were acceptable in prose, we could all become clear, logical machines and all our problems would be solved!

TomFoskett said:

That's a good point with appositives. If only bullet points were acceptable in prose, we could all become clear, logical machines and all our problems would be solved!

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Who says they aren't acceptable in prose?

• They're used in tech writing all the time
• They're frequently used in non-fiction, particularly academic and instructional prose and textbooks
• They're used in cookbooks frequently
• They're often used in news writing