comma before second 'and' [conjunction]: Standard and Poor's and

[Synesthetic]

Is it necessary, or even appropriate, to use commas when referring to multiple titles when one or more of those titles have "and" in them?

The reason I ask is that it seems necessary to distinguish between the "ands".

I realise that probably sounds quite confusing so an example would be:

"Standard and Poor's, and Moody's"

Where the two titles (names of ratings agencies, FYI) are
1. Standard and Poor's
2. Moody's

Point being, it would be confusing to write
"Standard and Poor's and Moody's"
However, it is usually not necessary (and perhaps grammatically inappropriate?) to use commas when referring to two nouns, for example:
"I always eat scones with butter and jam" (a comma is not needed between "butter" and "and")

So in short, is it necessary to use a comma in the initial example?

 

[JulianStuart]

You should check out this thread for discussions of the Oxford/Harvard comma and the specific usages associated with your kind of examples, where a member of a list is "A and B".

 

[owlman5]

You have done well to punctuate this as you did: "Standard and Poor's, and Moody's". If you had not placed a comma where you did, those readers not familiar with these names would think they were all part of the same company. By adding the comma, you made sure that people knew that "Standard and Poor's" and "Moody's" referred to two different entities. So your comma was necessary in that list.

 

[Synesthetic]

You have done well to punctuate this as you did: "Standard and Poor's, and Moody's". If you had not placed a comma where you did, those readers not familiar with these names would think they were all part of the same company. By adding the comma, you made sure that people knew that "Standard and Poor's" and "Moody's" referred to two different entities. So your comma was necessary in that list.

Thank you for clarifying the fact that it was necessary to include the comma - it does seem like common sense but there was just the fact that it seemed to contradict convention with respect to comma usage.

And thanks very much for that link, Julian - it's very relevant to what I was asking.