well, try here first...

[Perry Hutchison]

Robert Bonomi <bonomi at mail.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
> > Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 05:48:48 +0100
> > From: Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de>
> > Subject: Re: well, try here first...
> >
> > On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:20:51 -0700, Chad Leigh Shire.Net LLC wrote:
> > > 
> > > To be fair, a lot of the same rules exist for English.  The
> > > comma is not optional or left to preferences in English,
> > > either.  There are definite rules and it brings structure.
> >
> > That matches what I've learned in school, but it doesn't match
> > realitiy anymore. :-)
> >
> > A famous thing is "comma in lists": Unlike German, where "and"
> > substitutes a comma, in English it seems to be valid to put a
> > comma infront of "and":
>
> In 'classic' English (as taught in the 60s and earlier), a comma
> was _required_ before a trailing 'and' in a list of 3 or more
> items, and forbidden if there were only two items.

By the time I got to high school (mid-60's), the comma before 'and'
(or 'or') in a list of three or more was being taught as optional.
My junior-in-college daughter tells me it is still being taught
that way today.  She and I have each come to the conclusion that
it should _not_ be considered optional, because omitting it can
sometimes cause the last two items in the list to appear as one
item (at least on a first reading -- and one should not need to
read things a second time to understand the punctuation).

Last I heard, we have the Associated Press to thank for this
travesty, their style manual having been revised in the late
1950's or early 1960's to say something along the lines of "don't
use a comma in that situation unless it's necessary for clarity."
I suppose it may have had something to do with saving a fraction
of a second of Teletype time, and a minuscule amount of space in
a newspaper column (which could occasionally lengthen/shorten a
story by an entire line), every time such a construct turned up
in a news story.  Neither column space nor Teletype time was
exactly inexpensive back then.

> The accepted 'rules' changed about the time "new math" was foisted
> on the world.  The most visible ones involved comma placement, and
> punctuation inside trailing quotes.
>
>       The password is "frodo."
>       It is 5 characters long.
>
>       The password is "frodo."
>       It is 6 characters long.
>
> BAH, HUMBUG!!! 
>
> Make the first one:
>       The password is "frodo". 
> and all the ambiguity goes away.    <*snarl*>

I think the AP may have been behind this one too, although I don't
see how the rationalization could have involved either space or
transmission time.  Meanwhile, a question mark or exclamation point
in the same circumstances is supposed to be placed inside _or_
outside the closing quotation mark, depending on whether or not it
is part of the material being quoted.  IMO it makes more sense to
apply that same rule to periods and commas also.