I think it's too early.

Question

I'm having a brain lasp here. Where would I put the comma for the next line?

Excellent customer service and leadership skills along with strong verbal and written communication skills are required at all times.

Hitchhiker · Accepted Answer

OOo weird one!

I'd just rewrite it to:

We require excellent customer service, strong leadership and a firm grasp of verbal and written communication skills.

Whl626 · Answer

If only comma is required for the sentence then just to use here

Excellent customer service, and leadership ........

Trellis · Answer

You never put a comma beside and so no comma is needed there.

She had a dog, a car and a bike.

No comma next to the and.

Hitchhiker · Answer

The comma-and combo is American: Usage of a comma before 'and' (Guest: Tharabg)

Trellis · Answer

Oh. I went to USA public schools and I did not know that about USA and commas.

Maybe my USAness was corrupted by the 11 years in London ages 17 to 28?

I usually never put a comma with and, or and but.

Am I all mixed up?
I am not a grammar expert.
Not at all.

I daydreamed through the year of grammar in secondary school
because the teacher was a voluptuous hottie from New Orleans.

I only know what I have picked up from reading literature
which, I admit, is often creative in its usage of grammar and punctuation.

Lib · Answer

I'm not sure if I'd put a comma in the sentence, but if I did, I'd put it here:

Excellent customer service and leadership skills, along with strong verbal and written communication skills are required at all times.

Ryan smith · Answer

In my opinion no comma is required in the original sentence.

"A and B along with C and D are required." This sounds fine to me.

By the way, the so-called optional comma drives me nuts. This comma, that is, the comma next to the "and" is sometimes called the oxford comma.

There is not a single reason to omit it other than abiding by a convention inspired by laziness. However there is one very good reason to use it: clarity.

For example:

With the oxford comma, the following sentence clearly states the relationship between bread and butter:
"I need to buy apples, bread and butter, and a screwdriver."
(It may imply that if I can't find any bread, I won't buy the butter)

Without the oxford comma #1; this looks like a typo of some kind:
"I need to buy apples, bread and butter and a screwdriver."

Without the oxford comma #2; the relationship between bread and butter is missing:
"I need to buy apples, bread, butter and a screwdriver."

If anyone can tell me an advantage of not using this comma other than saving about 0.1 seconds of typing, I'm all ears. Like I said, this topic gets me into a frenzy.

Lynch sums up my argument nicely (see entry under Comma):
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/c.html

I think it's too early.

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