>Can somebody please explain me how the Empire did manage to last when its subjects couldn't even agree on whether to put a comma?<
The (British, I assume you mean?) Empire also had problems agreeing how to spell and how to pronounce! Is this why it didn't last? IS this a universal rule? Did confusion about Latin pronounciation cause the end of that Roman Empire??? Ah, the unsuspected role of the language police in world history...
I read somewhere (Agatha Christie, I think, though Heaven only knows where she got it) that for every person who can't spell, there are seven who can't punctuate. I've often thought that figure was too low.
PS I'd only put a comma before 'and' if I was starting a new clause,
and the new clause had a subject different from the main subject of the sentence. Even then, not always. That's the grammatical rule I learned, but sometimes the comma seems superfluous, so I miss it out.
