Punctuation for a List

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Yasaibatake

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Hope I'm not rehashing old questions, since commas seem to be a common topic on this board, but this is turning into a consistant problem for me. Honestly, my grammar isn't fantastic, so hopefully you all know the answer.

The way I was taught, when you wanted to list something, you needed a comma after each one of the list entries, like this:

She bought apples, bananas, and pears.

But ever since I went off to college, my teachers are starting to count it wrong. They say there isn't supposed to be a comma between bananas and pears. I asked my Comp 2 teacher about it and she said it was a comma splice. On the other hand, my Lit of Sci-Fi teacher says it's supposed to be there. He says a comma splice is when you use a comma where you were supposed to use a period. So, is the extra comma just a matter of opinion? What exactly is a comma splice anyway?

Thanks everyone! I apologize in advance for any grammar errors I might have made in typing this post - you all make me rather nervous about the way I talk!
 

Dawnstorm

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The comma before and is correct. Not using the comma before the and is correct, too. Unless you want to join the comma wars, in which case you can defend your usage using the terms "serial comma", or for more authority "Oxford Comma" or "Harvard Comma" - depending on which side of the Atlantic you're arguing.

It's not a comma splice in any way I can see. A comma splice occurs when you use a comma to join two independent clauses (clauses with both subject and verb) without a conjunction.
 

Tsu Dho Nimh

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Using a final comma in a list - the terminal or serial comma - is NOT a comma splice. Gluing two unrelated sentences together with a comma is a splice.

I go through this battle frequently with "global English" ... what is important is to be consistent within any article, series of books, or whatever. Because it's optional, ALWAYS using it avoids having to think whether you ned it, and it avoids confusing ESL readers.

http://www.write101.com/W.Tips141.htm

Examples of silliness caused by omitting the serial comma:

* "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
* "For lunch we ordered BLT, peanut butter and tuna sandwiches from the delicatessen."
* "Here lies Charlie Weeks, a lawyer and an honest man."
* "Door prizes will include lab equipment, books written by members of the bio department and a fruitcake."
 
IceCreamEmpress

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Your Lit of Sci-Fi teacher is correct about what a comma splice is. Yay for him or her.

Your Comp 2 teacher was incorrect, although maybe he or she just had a moment of brainfreeze and said "comma splice" when he or she meant to say "extraneous serial comma."

I say you'll pry my serial comma from my cold dead hands.
 

Lance_in_Shanghai

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Until recently, perhaps in the past fifty years, a comma was required after every item save the last in a list of more than two items. You'll find that rule in all old composition primers such as Strunk's. Nowadays, it seems a new style to omit the comma before "and". To some, it seems arbitrary to require a comma before "and" in a list of three but not in a list of two items. Another new trend is to omit the previously required comma before "and" or "but" when it introduces an independent clause. Usage often seems to dictate proper grammar and style although my professor in grad school always disagreed with me on this point.

(IceCremEmpress, unless "cold dead" is an adjective phrase, such as we have in "stone dead", I would expect to see a comma after "cold".)

(Hey, Tsu Dho Nimh, were there really some books co-authored by a member of the bio department and a fruitcake? My Aunt Margaret was a fruitcake but not an author.)
 
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Yasaibatake

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Thanks for the clarification! I suppose this means I need to buy a good grammar reference book, doesn't it? Ah, well, it'd probably be a helpful thing to have around anyway.

At least I can rest easy about my serial commas now. :)
 

Dawnstorm

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"To my parents, Ayn Rand and God" is a classic, and thus has been countered with "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God". :D

"Here lies Charlie Weeks, a lawyer and an honest man," is a bad example, because of the singular verb. The most obvious interpretation rules out a series before we even get to the comma. On the other hand, I doubt that "Here lie Charlie Weeks, a lawyer and an honest man," would be too ambiguous.

The link's main example is flawed, too:

The author presents the following sentence as confusing on account of the serial comma:

link said:
The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis, Casey and protecting wildlife.
Click to expand...


And then says that the serial comma avoids the confusion:
link said:
The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis, Casey, and protecting wildlife.
Click to expand...


Because:
link said:
Aah - suddenly it makes perfect sense. The site has details of the bases, plus information on protecting wildlife - there's not a base called, "protecting wildlife."
Click to expand...

But that's not true. The list is awkward with or without the comma. Whether you use the comma or not is a matter of taste, here.

See: the core sentence could be phrased like this:

The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including various scientific bases and protecting wildlife.

​
So what we have here is a list of two items separated by an "and". Not even the most ardent admirers of the serial comma would use one here.

The problem comes because there's a second, longer list embedded in the list of two, but it's not finished off with "and":

the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis, Casey

​
would read more natural as:

the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis(,) and Casey

​
Now how do we re-introduce this into the sentence?

a) No serial comma: The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis and Casey and protecting wildlife.

b) Serial comma only in longer list: The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis, and Casey and protecting wildlife.

c) Serial comma in both lists, making an exception for the no-comma-with-two-list-items rule: The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis, and Casey, and protecting wildlife.

Although if separate items in a list that themselves contain commas, you use the semicolon, so c) might also look like this:

The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis, and Casey; and protecting wildlife.

d) (No) Serial comma in only the extended list, but setting the extended list off as a parenthetical phrase (using commas would add confusion, so I'm opting for dashes - brackets would be an alternative): The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including various scientific bases -- at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis(,) and Casey -- and protecting wildlife.


​
Personally, I think the best solution (with or without the serial comma doesn't matter at all) would be to simply reverse the list items (and rephrase "protecting wildlife", so you don't get "including protecting"):

The above information comes from the Australian Antarctic Division site: http://www.aad.gov.au/ which has details of many things relating to Antarctica, including wildlife protection and the scientific bases at Heard Island, Mawson, Davis(,) and Casey.

​
I do think this site isn't accurate enough about the issue at hand, and - in its main case - was scape goating the serial comma's absence. I also think it's a case of rule-blindness (which I know because I've suffered from this myself more than once).

Seriously: use the serial comma or don't. Most readers won't even notice on which side you are.
 
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