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Al Geist wrote
"After nearly 30 years of writing for a living, I can say that forgoing
that last comma in a series has nothing to do with marketing writers.
If you have a background in journalism (which I do in addition to
electrical and software engineering), you learn before the end of your
first assignment to ditch that last comma. Adding a comma before the
"and" is like the old Monty Python Department of Redundancy Department.
Since part of my task as a technical writer is to be concise and remove
redundancy, that redundant serial comma is gone. . ."
I think the omission of the last serial comma in newspaper writing is not an issue of redundancy; it's AP style.
Martha
Hey look at me: I used a semicolon. Next I'm going to run with scissors.
