Everyone agrees that items in a series should be separated
with commas. But not everyone agrees that the last (serial)
comma, which comes before the conjunction in a list, is necessary.
serial comma: Today
we learned about bug bites, poison ivy, and rashes.
without serial comma: Today
we learned about bug bites, poison ivy and rashes.
We at SparkNotes are advocates of the serial comma.
We think it makes prose clearer and more readable—which is, after
all, the point of punctuation. And it resolves potential ambiguities
in such phrases as The author would like to thank her parents,
Jesus and Mrs. Chin.
Don’t use the serial comma before ampersands.
• Judy, Liza & Co. sponsored the
cabaret contest.
