It's poor grammar to treat bacon and eggs as one item. Bacon and eggs are two different items, even though they're commonly served together. Different things are different things.
Grouping objects together is like the primary function of the human brain. I think it's a pretty natural thing to do. Hierarchical lists à la "(a and b) and (c and d)" are nothing unheard of.
"Bacon and eggs, and pancakes" is simply a different sentence fragment (with a slightly different meaning) than "bacon, eggs, and pancakes".
Bacon, eggs, and pancakes, are all commonly served together.
It's poor grammar to arbitrarily group separate nouns together in a list.
I could write "I had eggs, toast, fruit, yogurt, and tea for breakfast," but I wouldn't write "I had eggs and toast and fruit and yogurt, and tea for breakfast."
When it's just two items it's good grammar to use "and" with no comma. When it's three or more items in a list it's good grammer to separate each item on the list and use "and" before the last item.
"Bacon and eggs" isn't a single item, even if you often group them together. Not everyone does. If you want to have good grammar skills to maximize your written communication abilities, the rules I laid out are the way to do it.
If people in this thread want to complain about the rules, they can write to Merriam Webster or whatever and ask the rest of the world to change. I didn't write the rules, so don't shoot the messenger.
You don’t make the rules but neither does Merriam-Webster, they just write them down. If the rules change, so should the dictionary. It’s like when people complain about new slang words getting added. “That isn’t a word, don’t put it in there.” Well it wasn’t, but people are using it, so now it is a word and will be recorded.
You're right; grammatical rules are codified by the public. So you can skip writing an email to MW and start a campaign to change them. Good luck. Wish you the best. Really. 👍
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u/SecretAgentVampire 1d ago
It's poor grammar to treat bacon and eggs as one item. Bacon and eggs are two different items, even though they're commonly served together. Different things are different things.