Regret the Error

This week we offer a special "You be the Editor" edition of The Crunks. In last week’s edition, we noted a change to our site description:

Our site description previously read: "Regret The Error
reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications, and trends
regarding accuracy and honesty in the media." In accordance with AP style (whatever that is), it now reads: "Regret The Error
reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends
regarding accuracy and honesty in the media."

This set off a mini grammar rodeo. Several readers wrote in to question our change and three of the submission are below. We’ve never claimed to be grammar experts (and our posts prevent us from ever being able to),  so we humbly call upon you to help us do the right thing. Review these suggested changes and let us know what you think. The final decision will run in next week’s Crunks. The winner will receive a free subscription to the site (ha ha). Or maybe a hat from our editor’s personal collection. (Orange Kangol anyone?)

Navin pointed us to two places that would seem to disagree with our change. From Strunk & White:

In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.
Thus write,
   red, white, and blue

And the US Government Printing Office,

The comma is used…[a]fter each member within a series of three or more words, phrases, letters, or figures used with and, or, or nor.
   red, white, and blue

We also had a thoughtful submission from Robbie:

…Actually, your mission statement is still unclear, regardless of concordance with AP style guide. Unless I’ve missed something you’ve removed a comma which, according to most usage manuals and Strunk and White, is permissible, and in my opinion, often quite helpful in clarifying meaning, especially in lists of groups or pairs.
While the AP theory is that the extra comma in a list slows the reader down, the result in the case of your mission statement is that the reader is forced to go back and read it over again to understand the intent, which is even slower and more annoying.
The problem lies in the currently common and apparently acceptable use of the word trend as a verb — eg things trending upwards, or "we can see by the chart that the Dow trends downwards when inflation is on the rise." etc
A much clearer statement would be anything along the lines of "Regret The Error reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications(,) and overall trends of accuracy and honesty in the media.
The addition of overall (or any other adjective, or even the article "the") eliminates the ambiguity of trends. "In regards to" is almost always better than "regarding" for similar reasons but I feel that "of "serves the interests of brevity…

Finally, Richard offered us two other suggestions:

"Regret The Error reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications, and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media."
or
"Regret The Error reports on corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy, and honesty in the media."

We’d also like to propose simplified solution:

Regret The Error reports.

 Report an error