[NewMusic] Transbay help + a periodic gripe about transbay/bayimproviser postings

[Chris Broderick]

There's a lot of disagreement about whether serial commas (i.e. the final comma in a series) are necessary or not.  It is an ongoing dispute among contemporary grammarians, and the subject of many a flame war & bar fight.  It's certainly true that it's more common nowadays to omit the serial comma.  But it's like ending a sentence in a preposition, common enough to be ubiquitous, but something that militant grammarians will get upset about.  It's your call.
 
Chris Broderick
www.myspace.com/christophermichaelbroderick 
"Silence is so accurate."
  -Mark Rothko

----- Original Message ----
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt at metatronpress.com>
To: Bay Area New Music Discussion Group <newmusic at music.mills.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 8, 2007 10:50:56 PM
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] Transbay help + a periodic gripe about transbay/bayimproviser postings

Sarah - 21 Grand wrote:

> - I think the commas between the 2nd and last terms "trumpeter, and
> vocalist" "idiosyncratic, and complex" are unnecessary

But note that Strunk's "The Elements of Style" disagrees:
http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html

"In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a
comma after each term except the last.

Thus write,

red, white, and blue
honest, energetic, but headstrong
He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents.

This is also the usage of the Government Printing Office and of the
Oxford University Press.

In the names of business firms the last comma is omitted, as

Brown, Shipley and Company

The abbreviation etc., even if only a single term comes before it, is
always preceded by a comma."

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