Tasnif Style Guide — Page 59
CHAPTER 6: PUNCTUATION language against good and righteous people; if in my soul there is nothing else but mischief, evil, malefaction, and selfishness; if I have set up a business for simply deceiv- ing the world; if, according to them, God forbid, I do not even believe in God; if there is no evil that is not to be found in me and I possess all the sins of the world, and my soul is replete with every kind of wrongdoing; if I have usurped the wealth of many and abused many (who were as pure as angels); and if I have surpassed all in every evil and fraud; then what is the mystery behind this that— albeit I was the one who was evil, wicked, perfidious, and a liar whenever a so-called 'saintly' person arose to con- front me, he himself was destroyed; whosoever initiated a mubahalah [prayer duel] against me, he himself was ruined; whosoever cursed me, himself fell prey to his own curse; and whosoever filed a case against me in court, was himself defeated? 59 The Oxford Comma When presenting a list of items, commas are used to distinguish the various individual units within the list. However, styles differ whether a comma is necessary after the second to last item in the list appears. The list of three or more items are joined at the end with an and or an or, and the question revolves around the need to place a comma before that and or or. This comma is knows as the serial comma or the Oxford comma. To illustrate, see the Oxford comma after 'Ramadan' in the following example of a list: ‘The