I am very glad you find the article useful, Kimberly. My goal with every post is to make clear something that people typically find confusing. I appreciate the feedback!

Hi, Sam. The intention is to make it read like a sentence. My rule of thumb (discussed in greater depth in the article to which you find a link at the end of this article) is to make the items free standing (i.e., no conjunctions) as long as the introductory statement is independent and can end with a colon. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not always OK to put a colon in front of a vertical list–only if the info before the colon can stand alone as a sentence. I included lots of examples in the separate article that talks more about punctuation.

I’ve generally shied away from commas and the last and/or. This usage reads too much like a sentence to me and if I wanted to require every listed item, I’d change the intro sentence to say that. Otherwise assumption is “or”, like in your college student list where students might need funds for only one of the items, not all three as you’ve indicated with the use of “and”. Do I sacrifice any coherency or comprehension by omitting the ties?

Yes! I was trying to create an example that used dependent clauses (in this case, relative/adjective clauses), and if we remove “who had,” we no longer have clauses. But I will try to think of a better example that isn’t so repetitive. Thank you!