Who uses the Oxford comma?
This is hard to say. It is not a question of British vs. US English. For example, the Oxford Style Manual (2002) and the Chicago Manual of Style (2003) support the mandatory use of the Oxford comma, while The New York Times stylebook and The Economist style manual oppose it. In her bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003), Lynne Truss sums up the issue nicely: “There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this, never get between these people when drink has been taken” (p. 84). To make a long story short: As a German native speaker you don’t have to use the Oxford comma when writing English, but be aware of the fact that it may be used in English and that, depending on the sentence, it can be very helpful to reduce ambiguity.
