This is the first column in Comma Connects, an occasional series detailing the building of Comma, the nonprofit set to assume ownership of The Spokesman-Review in 2026, through the personal stories of ...

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There’s no denying that commas are helpful little flecks of punctuation. They allow us to separate written clauses and do good work when especially numerous or complicated groups of things exist in a ...

The Oxford comma, so-called because the Oxford University Press style guidelines require it, is the comma before the conjunction at the end of a list. If your preferred style is to omit the second ...

There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the Oxford comma, the comma that goes before “and” in a list of three or more things. Is it a grammatical must or an unnecessary blight? (You’ve seen the ...

The case of the Maine milk-truck drivers who, for want of a comma, won an appeal against their employer, Oakhurst Dairy, regarding overtime pay (O’Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy) has warmed the hearts of ...