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Using a comma between all the items in a series, including the last two, avoids this problem. This last commathe one between the word and and the preceding wordis often called the serial comma or the Oxford comma. In newspaper writing, incidentally, you will seldom find a serial comma, but that is not necessarily a sign that it should be omitted in academic prose.
Notice that when two such elements of a sentence are compounded with a coordinating conjunction (as opposed to the two independent clauses of a compound sentence), the conjunction is usually adequate and no comma is required.