If you know appellate judges, you know they are all about style. Fashion, maybe not; but style, yes—writing style, that is. Most people think nothing of composing an email or letter off the top of their head. But these wizards of words labor over the smallest details. One favorite is the Oxford comma.

Commas generally break up a sentence and allow the reader to pause. So what is an Oxford comma? An Oxford comma, sometimes called the “serial comma,” is the final pause separating the items in a list, prior to the conjunction “and.” It also is appropriately inserted when “or” is used in a series.