Fan Club Friday - The Serial Comma

My husband and I really get irked that many people, publications, and advertisements (notice the comma use?) have been grouping lists of three things or more without a comma between the joining conjunction. I was taught way back in the day to use a serial comma and have clung to this lesson ferociously over the years, even as I've seen the world grow more and more lazy with its use. I know that layouts have changed with the advent of computers and that we live in an entirely different age than when type sets were originally established. I know that word processors took away the need for two spaces between sentences (which is still something I'm grappling with), but I see the lack of serial commas to be just plain lazy and to make lists ambiguous.

And I'm not trying to be stubborn. When I'm wrong, I try to admit it and embrace the new way. When I noticed that my poor copyeditor at Poppy had to go through my entire manuscript and change all of the spacing, I researched the new one-space-after-punctuation thing and gave a hearty, "My bad." Now, I'm a one-spacer.

But I'm still clinging to the serial comma. I can't give it up.

For example, if I write, "I'm going to the store for watermelon, beans, and carrots," it's pretty clear to the reader what I'm getting. You may argue that it is just as clear to you if you read it as, "I'm going to the store for watermelon, beans and carrots." But that groups beans and carrots. Are you looking for beans and carrots that are already packaged together?

By going down that road, you are setting yourself up for confusion. Look how clear things are when I write, "I'm going to the store for watermelon, black and brown beans, and carrots." When ditching the serial comma, it becomes, "I'm going to the store for watermelon, black and brown beans and carrots." The absence of the serial comma implies something unintended about the carrots.

Anyway, you can read about it here real quick because Oxford makes it all much clearer. But please, for the love of God and for my sanity, could we just embrace the serial comma?

Cause seriously -- I'm a super fan. I love you, serial comma!