comma before 'and'

No comma is required after the penultimate item of a list, unless the complexity of the sentence demands it in order to maintain clarity. Therefore that comma in your sentence is stylistically wrong-- it should read apple, orange and melon.

Adding a comma before the last item in a series is purely a style decision. The Chicago Style Manual prefers a comma, and fiction writing usually contains a comma; other style guides (such as those followed by newspapers) leave out the comma. It doesn't matter whether you add it or not, just as long as you're consistent throughout your document.

Interestingly, the Oxford University Press still inserts a comma before the 'and' in such a list, e.g.

1. The apple, orange, and melon are good for us.

The second comma is therefore known as the 'Oxford' comma. It used to be the norm, but isn't much used in current BrE. The people who devise secretarial courses are particularly averse to it.

My own (wildly speculative) t

Hardly wild, MrP. One I think I shall promulgate, in fact, thank you. You prefer the Oxford comma, though, do you? To me it looks cluttered. Prim upbringing, I suppose.

I'm sorry to say I conform to the norm, in ordinary business correspondence, letters of complaint to the local authority, poison pen letters, etc.

Elsewhere, I let the commas run free...

i apologise for using this old thread for my question as i think it's not necessary to start a new one.

the question: john is a tad faster, working hard and his writing has improved.

adding a comma before the and is unnecessary, right?

in the above case, adding a comma before the and is unnecessary because there isn't an independent clause before it and, also, the same subject (john) is being described and talked about, right?

Not as straightforward as it may seem.

John is a tad faster, working hard, and his writing has improved.

If this is to be correctly structured, we must recognize that working hard is a nonfinite clause as an adverbial modifying the main clause John is a tad faster. The whole independent clause (John...hard) then should be separated from the nex

thanks mister micawber. it is much clearer now. "working hard" is a non-finite clause (no subject) functioning as an adverbial and a comma should be in place after it as it is independent of the next clause. the comma should also be in place in the case of "appositive" or "explanatory interjection".

apples,and oranges