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All about the Oxford comma, including when it may or may not be necessary.
The article on Tony Blair is therefore an article on a topic closely related to Britain. However, take a person who now lives in a country other than the one of their birth, has dual nationality, and has an international career in two or more countries. An article on that person may not be closely related to one part of the English-speaking world.
The serial comma (for example the comma before and in "ham, chips, and eggs") is optional; be sensitive to possible ambiguity arising from thoughtless use or thoughtless avoidance, and be consistent within a given article. Avoid comma splices. Picture captions should not end in a full stop (a period) unless they are complete sentences.
Boldface is often applied to the first occurrence of the article's title word or phrase in the lead.This is also done at the first occurrence of a term (commonly a synonym in the lead) that redirects to the article or one of its subsections, whether the term appears in the lead or not (see § Other uses, below).
Comma splices are also occasionally used in fiction, poetry, and other forms of literature to convey a particular mood or informal style. Some authors use commas to separate short clauses only. [1] The comma splice is more commonly found in works from the 18th and 19th century, when written prose mimicked speech more closely. [10]
The question comma has a comma instead of the dot at the bottom of a question mark, while the exclamation comma has a comma in place of the point at the bottom of an exclamation mark. These were intended for use as question and exclamation marks within a sentence, a function for which normal question and exclamation marks can also be used, but ...
In general, the comma shows that the words immediately before the comma are less closely or exclusively linked grammatically to those immediately after the comma than they might be otherwise. The comma performs a number of functions in English writing. It is used in generally similar ways in other languages, particularly European ones, although ...
"Avoid the so-called Oxford comma; say 'he ate bread, butter and jam' rather than 'he ate bread, butter, and jam'." The Economist Style Guide [49] "Do not put a comma before and at the end of a sequence of items unless one of the items includes another and. Thus 'The doctor suggested an aspirin, half a grapefruit and a cup of broth.