The Oxford Comma

I love the Oxford Comma, (aka the Serial Comma) though I’m woefully inconsistent in using it. As a child it always seemed wrong to me that you would not continue using commas all the way to the end of a list, and it wasn’t until after college that I learned that what my younger self desired to do was in fact grammatically acceptable. I strive to use the Oxford Comma whenever I remember it, but many years of education in which the Oxford Comma was frowned upon have formed habits in my writing that are hard to break. Looking over my past writings, I find myself using the Oxford Comma from time to time, and I like to think of these instances as brief moments where my indignant younger self came bursting out in a little fit of grammatical self-righteousness. One day I’ll finally break free from those writing habits and use the Oxford Comma consistently, and when that day comes my younger self will finally be vindicated.