Well, that’s what you may think reading the following photo caption from a story about the legendary country singer Haggard:

The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

You see the problem there? The way the second sentence is punctuated, it appears that Merle’s ex-wives are named Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall. Anything’s possible, of course, and I’m certainly an open-minded guy about such things, but I tend to think it’s more likely the caption writer meant that the documentarians interviewed two ex-wives, as well as Kristofferson and Duvall, for a total of four people interviewed. But that writer is apparently one of the type of people I bicker with almost daily, the ones who think the serial comma is an outmoded and overly fussy affectation favored only by grammar snobs and professional pedants. I wish I could just let such arguments go and say that it’s their business if they want to live dangerously. But I’m afraid such things are actually my business. I’m a proofreader, you see, and I’m all about preventing misunderstandings that conflate two innocent women with two grizzled celebrities. Behold, and see the difference a simple little comma can make:

The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson, and Robert Duvall.

Now, was that so difficult? There really is no excuse for putting up with a major case of ambiguity simply because you don’t like the look of an extra punctuation mark in your sentence, or because you’re too lazy to punch that key one more time, or whatever the reason is. I’ve heard them all, and none of them fly when it comes to plain old-fashioned clarity.
Serial commas, people. They were invented for a good reason.

Via Jeff Weintraub, who agrees with me that serial commas rock.