By: Marisa

In reply to Vanessa. OK, I am jumping into this discussion not to be obnoxious (at least I hope not) but because I will take any excuse to argue in a friendly manner about punctuation! I think that if you had a serial comma, it would be even more confusing. Because when you are talking about just two people, you write: "Megan Rapinoe, my girlfriend, and I" OR "my girlfriend, Megan Rapinoe, and I"; in both cases, Megan Rapinoe is my girlfriend (only not really, sigh. Anyway —). And when you are talking about three people with serial commas, you write exactly the same thing! So I think the way you did it in the article without the serial comma is actually the least confusing way to do it (without lots of extra explanations)—the "my girfriend" isn't seet off by commas so it has to mean that she's a third party to the birthday pudding. I also fully support your love of serial commas in general; they do come in handy sometimes. And thanks for the opportunity to discuss commas! (Rest of the world, please don't roll your eyes... :) )