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Sometimes when I write some scientific papers, I feel there are too many "and"s and commas in a sentence which might lead to some confusion because usually the logic in scientific papers is quite complex.

E.g.,

  • Today, I wet met my friends, Aaron, Bob, and Carlo, and we had a lot of fun talking about science, philosophy, and politics.

First are the comma before "and"s mandetory. I heard different versions. I am confused. How to avoid them? Or this is clear for most people?

Edwin Ashworth
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    What does "wet met" mean? You met at the beach? – Hot Licks Aug 05 '20 at 12:06
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    There is a subject-verb agreement error ("are the comma”) and two typos in your post: “wet”, and “mandetory”, which should be spelled mandatory. – Mari-Lou A Aug 05 '20 at 12:23
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    The above comment illustrates when an Oxford comma is unnecessary :) – Mari-Lou A Aug 05 '20 at 12:28
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    Actually, I don't think there are too many commas or ands in that sentence. But if you feel there are, a good solution is to break the sentence into several sentences, as Mari-Lou's answer suggests. – Peter Shor Aug 05 '20 at 12:42
  • @Hot Licks It's when your social bubble pops. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 05 '20 at 15:02
  • Just a thought—you can make more interesting sentences that use 'and' to join clauses by asking what is the relationship here? In your sentence, you have cause and effect—because you met friends, you had a good time. So the word 'so' or 'then' would give the reader more information than the vanilla 'and' does. – Yosef Baskin Aug 05 '20 at 15:11

2 Answers2

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The colon can be used for introducing a list and the Oxford comma is useful for separating the last item from its predecessor. Finally, I would advise the OP to split their sentence into two:

Today I met my friends: Aaron, Bob, and Carlo. We had a lot of fun talking about science, philosophy, and politics.

Mari-Lou A
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The comma before 'and' in a list like "Aaron, Bob, and Carlo" is optional, and very much a personal choice. It is usually safe to leave it out (unless you are writing for a particular house style which requires it).

If you wish to avoid logical confusion, then you will need to distinguish between the uses for a comma. Commas can be used to form lists and to break a sentence into clauses. Both uses are correct, but to avoid ambiguity it is best not to use the comma for both purposes in the same sentence.

If in doubt, break the sentence into shorter sentences. If you don't want to have two separate sentences, you could use a semi-colon to separate clauses instead:

  • Today I met my friends Aaron, Bob, and Carlo. We had a lot of fun talking about science, philosophy, and politics.
  • Today I met my friends Aaron, Bob, and Carlo; we had a lot of fun talking about science, philosophy, and politics.

Colons can also help with logic by explicitly indicating the start of a list.

For example, "In this experiment I used metals, Imaginarium, Pseudonium and Ultronium" could mean

  • I used metals (which were Imaginarium, Pseudonium and Ultronium)
  • I used metals (which are not named) and I used Imaginarium, Pseudonium and Ultronium.

By contrast, "I used metals: Imaginarium, Pseudonium and Ultronium" unambiguously indicates that the metals are Imaginarium, Pseudonium and Ultronium.

NickK
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