Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Notice the curios capitalisation
>>
>> It's standard. Everything but conjunctions and articles and 
>> prepositions gets capitalized, and those others if they start the 
>> sentence of course.
> 
> So why are "It" and "Is" capitalised, but not "to" and "and"? That seems 
> rather inconsistent to me.

"It" is a pronoun and "Is" is a verb. I didn't say it made sense. I said 
it was a consistent rule.

> Really? In UK English, you never put a comma before an "and". Unless 
> it's a new clause in the sentence anyway.

This is a new clause in the sentence.

In particular, it's an independent clause. Which is to say, if you took 
the "and" off, it would be a complete sentence with subject and verb. 
Hence, it gets a comma before the conjunction to separate it from the 
preceding clause. Commas separate things, and hyphens join them.

But as I said, this is explicitly American rules, and the UK rules 
differ here.

> "X, Y and Z" is the correct way here, but they wrote "X, Y, and Z". 
> I couldn't comment on whether or not it's correct US English.

You need the comma before the "and" at the end of a list of the list 
element before or after the "and" has a preposition or conjunction in 
it. Otherwise it's optional.

They had two flavors: strawberries and creme, or coffee and chocolate.

> (Did I tell you about the friendly cashier who told my grandad that "you 
> speak our language very well"? Au contrare, *you* speak *our* language 
> rather badly! :-P But there we are...)

Heh.
-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message