“We wish you the best happiness, joy and blessings.” I see this all the time and it bugs the shit out of me. There is a comma between “happiness” and “joy”. Where’s the comma between “joy” and “and”? This sentence indicates that happiness is one item and joy+blessings are another item. If the intention is to express a list of three things the sentence should include a comma between each item in the list. So, “We wish you the best happiness, joy, and blessings.”
This was pointed out in high school and CompSci explained the why. Natural language parsing is hard. English has lots of and awful rules. Computer spell checkers can’t tell when the sentence should use “joy, and” or “joy and”. So, it never suggests the comma and lets writers get away with out it. Now, ten years have passed and everyone thinks this is the correct grammatical rule. It isn’t. If you go back and add the comma the spell checker doesn’t say anything.
Why is this a pet peeve? Because I crave consistency and this sentence is the simplest case. It’s easy to understand with or without the comma. I want one rule for them all. All the cases no matter how complex should follow the same behavior otherwise you end up with something like the confusing mess named English.
Try this one, “Our farm has two sheep, 5 hens and a cock, a horse and a couple of cows.” vs “Our farm has two sheep, 5 hens and a cock, a horse, and a couple of cows.” Which is easier to read? The first one kind of runs on and you are left wondering if the horse and cow are related to one another like the hens and cock.
Sentences can get more complex than this. Just read Bertalanffy. Without the sign posts of grammar it’s easy to leave the reader floundering. Have a heart. Be kind. Show the comma some love.