The one I've always heard (and used) is --

    To my parents, Ayn Rand and God

which was, as the story goes, a dedication line in a ms. submitted 
for publication.  Needless to say, the editor added the serial comma.

Though it inevitably provoked laughter, the line never seemed to 
convince the hard-core opponents of the comma in that position.  Nor 
did my many examples illustrating the fact that (to my mind, at any 
rate) the word "and" is not synonymous with ",and" -- if it were, the 
two would be interchangeable.  And adding a comma would never change 
meaning.

Even handbooks recommending suppression of the serial comma recognize 
that there are instances when one must add it for readability or to 
prevent misreading.  Some are so stubborn on the matter, they don't 
want to use it even then.  Strange.


Odile


* And there's an instance of the comma as a stand-in for a missing 
"that."  I rather like it at times, though I was warned against just 
such a use by one of my teachers.



At 9:28 AM -0400 7/15/06, Christine Gray wrote:
>An example I use to show the necessity of the serial comma--of which I am a
>proponent--is the following:
>
>I respect my parents, Mother Teresa and Einstein.
>
>Without the serial comma, it seems that Mother Teresa and Einstein are my
>parents!
>
>Christine Gray


<snip>

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