On 4/10/11 1:23 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
On Sat, 2011-04-09 at 21:37 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
[ . . . ]
I see. I go by "Bugs in Writing" (awesome book) and Strunk/White. They
both recommend the comma, no ifs and buts (hard for me to get used to
because in Romanian that comma is _never_ correct).
The "bibles" in this situation are "The Oxford Style Manual" and "The
Chicago Manual of Style", everything else is mere commentary. :-)
Romanian is not English, rules do not transfer ;-)
Just googled it now, it's quite a story. Found among other things a
Wikipedia page dedicated entirely to the topic!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma
Since when has the "Oxford Comma" been known as the "Harvard Comma".
Never. Pah.
Above all, it's your article, and one great thing about that is you get
to decide everything about it. A great feeling!
Except when the sub-editors impose the publisher's choices. Of course
they always work to either "The Oxford Style Manual" or "The Chicago
Manual of Style", so the moral is to buy one of them and work to it.
http://www.suite101.com/content/the-chicago-manual-of-style-vs-the-oxford-style-manual-a267432
Also "The Oxford Style Manual" is smaller and cheaper as well as being
better. And of course English, whereas "The Chicago Manual of Style" is
just American English.
I shall now duck to avoid the spamming that this troll will invoke. :-)
In fact let me extend the same suggestion to you too: write! You are a
seasoned writer who has recently worked a lot in and on D, so I'm sure
you have a lot to share. And you stand to gain an iPad, too.
Andrei
