Time to shut down this list?

[David Adam]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004, Nikolas Britton wrote:
> >redundant. One nitpicky thing - although punctuation rules say it's
> >technically correct to use a comma before the last item in a series,
> >that is archaic usage, and the most commonly accepted modern rule is to
> >leave it off. So, it would be better as: "... problem solving, sharing
> >ideas and moral support." It's not that big of a deal, but it's better
> >to use accepted punctuation rules, and, besides, if it ends up the
> >other way it's going to drive me crazy. Sorry, but I was raised by a
> >mom who's an English teacher ...
> >
> >- jt
> >
> My college English teacher said it was only ok for news papers to leave
> it off so they could save space.

Ahh, the old Oxford (or serial) comma...

Nikolas, your college English teacher was right. You should leave the
third comma in there. The FreeBSD Documentation Project says so :-)

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/fdp-primer/writing-style.html

"Use the serial comma

    In a list of items within a paragraph, separate each item from the
others with a comma. Separate the last item from the others with a comma
and the word ``and''."

Remember, for fun and games with grammar, you can always join
freebsd-doc@!

(And incidentally, this is fast going OT...)

Cheers,

David Adam
zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
"Second-year MBBS... so that means you can cure 1/6th of all diseases?"