Editing some copy written in American recently, I grumbled to myself about all the Oxford commas – the ones like those in the subject line, that appear entirely redundantly in sentences involving lists. As though ‘Apples, pears and bananas’ is somehow wrong. It’s all a hangover from a pompous and smug notion of the language that allows the supposedly educated to sneer at their supposed educational inferiors, and I loath it.

Then what should turn up in my inbox but this, from a friend:

Illustrating, amusingly, that while often redundant, and certainly not to be used invariably, the OC has its place.