When you're writing or typing and begin to list items in consecutive order, do you add a comma prior to the conjunction before the final item? Or not? The inclusion of that final comma is a great ...

Quite some time ago, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) was introduced to the Pinterest website (you can also download a special Pinterest app to your smartphone or tablet). In the old days before computers, ...

If you’re looking for a grammatical convention guaranteed to spark an unnecessarily outraged debate, look no further than the Oxford comma [Editor’s note: I don’t know that I’d call it unnecessary].

There’s a cartoon about commas going around on the Internet. The first panel reads: “With the Oxford comma: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.” The illustration shows four people: two men, one ...

Anyone who has written for the Brown Daily Herald has had to put up with the stain of barbarism that persists in its style guide. I am referring to the rule that prohibits the use of the Oxford comma, ...

In school, I was taught about conjunctions (e.g. or and and) and the role they play in sentence structure – they are linking words. They do what they say on the tin: con-(i.e. with) and -junction (i.e ...

Editor’s Note: John McWhorter teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy and music history at Columbia University and is the author of “Words on the Move.” The opinions expressed in this ...