The Oxford Comma and Other Matters

© Robert A. Buckmaster

The Oxford comma, for those of you who do not know, or may have forgotten, is the final comma in a sentence list of items, such as this:

I went to the shops to buy bread, cheese, and milk.

The one after cheese and before and is the Oxford one. The other ones are common or garden variety commas.

There are basically two camps when it co…