On 9/20/05,
Josh Berkus <
josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> I always learned it was a grammar thing, and that the serial comma should
> always be included to prevent ambiguity. Even Strunk and White says so.
> The only place that omits them anymore is US newspapers, and even there it
> is finally dying out. Since this is a global press release, I say we add
> that final serial comma in, and weather the storm of angry newspaper
> editors. ;)
Well, it's not a grammar thing; it's a style thing. However, I don't care
that much personally, so I'm fine with putting them in if other people care.
The funny thing is that many (most) other European languages seems to
go for treating "and" equivalents as a comma substitute. I.e. in Polish
would be "8-way, 16-way i multi-core". There are other dissimilarities
I guess, for instance handling of commas and stops inside quotes -- if I am
correct, one should write like "an example quotation." Putting a full stop
inside the quotes. English always was different. ;)))
Ah, and personally I would be probably for writing the text grammatically
correct, even if that grammar may seem slightly illogical for me.
Regards,
Dawid