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Re: line adjustment at the end of a sentence


From: Joe Fineman
Subject: Re: line adjustment at the end of a sentence
Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2012 11:58:59 -0400
User-agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) Emacs/22.3 (windows-nt)

dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:

> Next subject:
>
> Is it:
>
>    a, b and c

Most people's natural punctuation; observed religiously in
journalism.

> or
>   a, b, and c  ?

A shibboleth.  Advised by all the tonier stylebooks, and required by
the tonier publishers, on both sides of the Atlantic.  As a
copyeditor, I have inserted many thousands of such commas.

The serial comma (Harvard comma, Oxford comma) has been controversial
for at least a century.  The name "Harvard comma" is usual among
journalists & probably harks back to the time when "Harvard" in such
circles connoted "rich intellectual snob".
-- 
---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||:  Quotation marks & car horns are warning devices that are  :||
||:  used by the vulgar to express their feelings.             :||


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