Hey! Men, Women, and Children- Let’s Embrace the Comma.

See what I did there? I’m talking about putting the last comma back where it belongs before the ‘and’ or the ‘or’ in lists of three or more.

What exactly are the journalistic standards these days regarding such typographical punctuation? Is there even one correct usage form? I understand headline writers want to save space sometimes, but you can’t have it both ways, can you? This isn’t a regional debate like ‘flavor’ vs. ‘flavour’*, ya know.

I grew up with crayons, scissors, and glue. The lunch menu was pizza, hamburger, or chicken sandwich. Remember when teachers took points off your paper for each spelling, grammatical, or punctuation error? Well, many writers either forgot their lessons or were never taught the ways of the comma as a youth.

-Dig.

*- Those crazy Brits and their U’s. And on a totally unrelated note, thinking about it, do you think Englishmen say we [Yanks] have ‘American accents’? If so, wouldn’t they be correct in the assumption? Since it was their language first (I don’t think that claim was on the line in the Revolutionary War…War of 1812 maybe, but I’ll have to do some fact checking on the stakes.), the tone we deem a ‘British accent’ is actually the proper English. But in the spirit of the rebellious colonial American, forget those tea-drinking, queen-loving suckas…they talk funny!