"Tom bought tea, coffee and salad, and Jim bought rice."
I feel like in this situation, it would be better to separate the items in the list with semicolons rather than commas, since there should be something between "coffee" and "and salad," since we're still separating different items in a list:
Tom bought tea; coffee; and salad, and Jim bought rice.
or, even better, Tom bought tea, coffee, and salad, while Jim bought rice.
which brings up the point that commas may not be the problem, but rather ambiguous sentence construction.
Putting a comma between "coffee" and "and" would be incorrect.
Funny, I learned this exactly opposite of what you've said. I learned that you always need a comma before the last item in a list, no matter what. Anyway...not to derail the thread...
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I feel like in this situation, it would be better to separate the items in the list with semicolons rather than commas, since there should be something between "coffee" and "and salad," since we're still separating different items in a list:
Tom bought tea; coffee; and salad, and Jim bought rice.
or, even better,
Tom bought tea, coffee, and salad, while Jim bought rice.
which brings up the point that commas may not be the problem, but rather ambiguous sentence construction.
Funny, I learned this exactly opposite of what you've said. I learned that you always need a comma before the last item in a list, no matter what. Anyway...not to derail the thread...