Ands and Commas - Grammar Confusion

[Green]

Originally Posted by iansales

Strunk and White is US grammar, not British. There are differences.

Aye, true enough. Strunk and White is still very useful as a reference, though. I'm sure you'd agree.

I find it quite funny when American forumites correct UK English-isms for their American versions (and it happens a lot more than I would have expected before submitting stuff online), but I also find it frustrating. I understand that in the US, they spell it, "color". I don't feel the need to force the British spelling on them, but it aggravates me when people try to enforce the reverse on me.

[Laerten]

I tend to always stick to the reasons for using punctuation that I learnt in school.

If your sentence needs a natural 'breather' before continuing then you should use punctuation e.g. commas etc. If your sentence is short enough not to need this 'breather' then don't. This rule works for using puctuation around the word 'and'.

To quote the above example:

He ran the Marathon in 2hr 10min and later broke the long jump record. (I would not use commas here as I feel the sentence does not need a breather)
In the morning he ran the Marathon in 2hr 10min and, later in the day, broke the long jump record. (If the sentence is made longer it warrants a breather)

I feel that the best way with punctuation is to read your sentence out loud, if it sounds better with punctuation, then put it in.

[PTeppic]

I wrote various passages of text with an English teacher who was American. We agreed to differ on a couple of specific grammar issues, one of which was the use of comma with and.

[mosaix]

If it's a list then omit the comma before the and. The reason is if it's a list of two:

I bought apples and oranges.

No comma is needed. But adding further items needs the comma between them:

I bought bananas, grapes, apples and oranges.