True. In
American English, a list of 3 items is usually "bacon, eggs, and cheese" - not
"bacon, eggs and cheese." The later implies a connection between the items, but
the former doesn't.
From a book dedication:
I'd like to thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand.
This case is covered in the style manual, which recommends the "with
comma" version for exactly that reason, at
(FWIW, the punctuation section I couldn't remember the reference to is
on that page as well, at
)
The current style suggestions seem mostly reasonable to me. Certainly
better than a bunch of weird wikimarkup to try to accomodate all variants.
-Mark