Oxford comma use is inconsistent
oxford-comma-consistencyon by default (info)English
Lists that put a comma before the final "and" in some places and not in others
Example
How to fix
Match the majority.
Why it matters
Whether to put a comma before the final "and" is a style-guide split. Neither is wrong. Mixed within one document, the reader re-parses every list.
What it does not flag
Whether to use the comma is not decided. A document split evenly has no minority and is not reported. An and / or right after a postal address closed by its postcode ("Leeds LS1 4AB, or email us") follows the address's commas and is not counted as a list, and neither is one after a spaced dash that follows the last comma (a dateline such as "Washington, DC – The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency"). Nor is a contrast after a comma ("more correct, not cleaner or more elegant") or an introduction opened by a sequence word ("First, outside a block, …"), and an example phrase set off by commas between a subject and its predicate ("X, such as Y, are excluded and are not…") is not counted as an item. A comma that closes an example phrase holding its own and / or just before the and ("gases, such as ozone and carbon dioxide, and the amount") closes the aside and is not counted. Nor is an and / or inside the name after a numbered division of a code ("Title 44, Public Printing and Documents") or inside a phrase that qualifies the item before it ("any other agency or office, in accordance with law or as directed").
Turning it off or relaxing it
Technical details
- Layer
- L3
- Status
- stable
- Severity
- info
- Languages
- en
- Suited to
- blog, business, technical, legal, docs, academic, literature, speech
- Reads from the document
- pos
Levels
Set a level for this rule under rules in chaff.yaml. With nothing set, it runs at the level its genre gives it (see By genre below).
| strict | reported when the minority style appears 3 times or fewer |
|---|---|
| normal | reported when the minority style appears 2 times or fewer |
| relaxed | reported when the minority style appears 1 times or fewer |
By genre
- Runs by default in
- technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes, legal/contract, legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Message
This list punctuates differently from the rest ({count} in this document)
This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/oxford-comma-consistency.yaml