Editing Serial comma (section)

===Mainly British style guides that consider it generally unnecessary but discretionary===
;''[[The Guardian]] Style Guide''<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/styleguide/o |title=Guardian and Observer style guide: O |access-date=April 1, 2010 |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=December 19, 2008 |archive-date=November 9, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131109084838/http://www.theguardian.com/styleguide/o |url-status=live }}</ref>
:"A comma before the final 'and' in lists: straightforward ones (he ate ham, eggs and chips) do not need one, but sometimes it can help the reader (he ate cereal, kippers, bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade, and tea)."
;''[[The Cambridge Guide to English Usage]]''<ref>{{cite book|last=Peters|first=Pam|author-link=Pam Peters|title=The Cambridge Guide to English Usage|year=2004|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, England|isbn=0-521-62181-X|title-link=The Cambridge Guide to English Usage}}</ref>
:"In British practice there's an Oxford/Cambridge divide … In Canada and Australia the serial comma is recommended only to prevent ambiguity or misreading."
;''[[Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage]]'', 4th edition, 2015<ref name="Fowlers2015">{{Cite book| last1=Fowler |first1=Henry Watson |editor1-last=Butterfield |editor1-first=Jeremy |title= Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-966135-0}}</ref>
:"The so-called 'Oxford comma' is an optional comma that follows the penultimate item in a list of three or more items and precedes the word 'and' … The general rule is that it should be used consistently or not at all … However, the Oxford comma can help to avoid ambiguity, ... and it is sometimes helpful to the reader to use an isolated serial comma for clarification, even when the convention has not been adopted in the rest of the text."
;''[[New Hart's Rules]]'', 2014<ref>{{cite book|title=New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide|date=2014|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-164914-1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l2pQBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT94}}</ref>
:"The general rule is that one style or the other should be used consistently. However, the last comma can serve to resolve ambiguity, particularly when any of the items are compound terms joined by a conjunction, and it is sometimes helpful to the reader to use an isolated serial comma for clarification even when the convention has not been adopted in the rest of the text."