Chicago Style Workout 1: Series and the Serial Comma

/ January 28, 2016

Older sportsman in trendy vintage tracksuit isolated on a yellow background and working out with lightweight green aerobics dumbbells

What’s your Chicago style fitness level?

This workout is the first in a series of dozens of workouts at Shop Talk, each of which has now been updated to refer and link to the 18th edition of CMOS. Whether you’re a beginner or an old pro, these interactive quizzes should help you build and maintain your editorial muscles.

Each workout focuses on a specific aspect of Chicago style. Advanced editors might tackle the exercises cold; learners can study the related sections of the Manual ahead of time.

One important caveat: Most of these questions are about Chicago style! If you’re an expert in MLA, AP, or New York Times style, you might be surprised to find that your instincts don’t quite match Chicago’s. That doesn’t mean your answer is necessarily “wrong”—it just means it isn’t Chicago style.

Today’s workout focuses on the section of the Manual called “Series and the Serial Comma,” paragraphs 6.19–21 in CMOS 18, with a detour into 6.60–64, on semicolons. (Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual. We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Ready? Go!

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 1: Series and the Serial Comma

1. When the conjunction and or or joins the last two elements in a series of three or more, a comma should appear before the conjunction (like the comma before and in “apples, oranges, and pears”).
2. In a short series whose elements are all joined by conjunctions, no commas are needed (as in “apples and oranges and pears”).
3. When an ampersand (&) is used instead of the word and (as in company names), a serial comma is normally omitted.
4. When elements in a series include internal punctuation, or when they are very long and complex, they may need to be separated by semicolons rather than by commas.
5. The phrase as well as can be substituted for and in a series (as in “apples, oranges, pears, as well as bananas”).
6. On social media, she follows her school librarians, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
7. The map was far from complete (lacking many of the streets, alleys, etc. seen in earlier iterations).
8. The serial comma has been Chicago style since the first edition of the Manual, published in 1906.
9. The serial comma is also called the Oxford comma.
10. Books published by Oxford University Press are required to use serial commas.

 

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