How the Proficient Use of Proper Commas Can Provide More Clarity to One’s Intentions

In their incredibly informative whiteboard series for Mental Floss , linguist Arika Okrent and illustrator Sean O’Neill verbally and visually explain the importance that proper commas in the English language have in making one’s intentions clearer. Among these are the vocative comma, the coordinate adjective comma, the interjection comma, the introductory comma and the hotly contested, often confusing Oxford comma.

Those who prefer it, put a comma after each item in a list, including before the last “and.” Those not in favor leave the one before the “and” out. Usually this isn’t a problem, but sometimes it can be.