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Which one is the most proper way to structure a list comprising "metabolic diseases," "microvascular complications," and "macrovascular complications" in the following example:

High blood glucose increases the risk of

  • metabolic diseases, microvascular complications, and macrovascular complications.
  • metabolic diseases, microvascular, and macrovascular complications.
  • metabolic diseases and microvascular and macrovascular complications.
  • metabolic diseases, and microvascular and macrovascular complications.
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    (b) is definitely wrong.
    – AmI
    Commented Nov 5, 2018 at 6:33
  • Could you be over-complicating something much more basic than it seems? There are simple rules for lists and they do not understand anything so sophisticated as "microvascular or macrovascular complications…" If they did, you would prolly be looking at something like "micro- or macrovascular complications." Does that much make sense?
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 21:48
  • @robbiegoodwin I agree that it may seem more complex than it really is. Others also suggested the hyphenated form, but the reason I opted to use the complete forms was that I wanted to follow the AMA style. Anyway, my point was to figure out if using ellipsis would reduce a 3-item list to a 2-item list joined by a conj.: [headache], [kidney disease], and [heart disease] vs [headache] and [kidney and heart diseases]
    – Vahid Farajivafa
    Commented Nov 7, 2018 at 4:08
  • Thanks and no, it would not. If you want to follow AMA, follow it. If you have doubts about that, please specify them. Quite separately is ellipsis matters here, please say how. If "conj.: [headache], [kidney disease], and [heart disease] vs [headache] and [kidney and heart diseases]" is more useful than a real example, please explain how.
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Commented Nov 8, 2018 at 0:32
  • @RobbieGoodwin sorry for the confusion, and thanks for your patience! Well, I assume we could join (kidney disease) and (heart disease) using the conj. (and) and omit one of the (disease)s in the process [called ellipsis?], thereby turning it to a single unit: (kidney and heart diseases). Now, if I want to join (headache) to this unit, I will be joining two units one of them already contains an (and), right? Therefore, I would write "x will cause headache and kidney and heart diseases." Please tell me if this is right, and, if not, what is the correct way.
    – Vahid Farajivafa
    Commented Nov 9, 2018 at 10:10

2 Answers 2

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Your first option works, as does your last, but I suggest refining the last to give: metabolic diseases, and micro- and macro-vascular complications, keeping the Oxford comma but avoiding the repetition in the two related compounds

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All are grammatical. However, "c) metabolic diseases and microvascular and macrovascular complications" would do a great favor to the reader.

You may want to hyphenate them as well, and while at it, further simplify:

High blood glucose increases the risk of metabolic diseases and micro– and macro-vascular complications.

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  • I, too, think that (c) is the most correct of the answers. However, I am afraid I can't agree on the grammaticality of all of the items--(b) in particular.
    – Vahid Farajivafa
    Commented Nov 6, 2018 at 12:43

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