I'm glad for that, JOG. All my style manuals (I count 14 of them here on my shelf) show the old way. They - and I - are old as well.
The Oxford comma, otherwise known as the serial comma, is for strings of objects. Example: My sandwich is peanut butter, jelly, and banana. Those who would leave out the comma after jelly would imply that the two were somehow combined.
The classic is the marvelous book title "Eats, shoots & leaves" Which is a grammar book that's delightful and funny to read. The title is about pandas, who are thus said to eat before they shoot something and depart. It's by Lynne Truss. Commas, apostrophes, and semi-colons become fun.
Hah, and I hear I thought those commas were Catholic nun commas.
We'd get red marks on our papers if we didn't use them properly. Too many red marks and one was likely to get a ruler or a pointer broken over one's knuckles.
