I've read E,S&L. Unless I'm mistaken, it doesn't say you put a space before a full stop. Nor does anything else I've read.

Though from first grade onwards, I've been taught that the comma before the 'and' is completely optional. I personally put it there because it seems like it should be there to me, but I think not putting it there is just as correct.

Yeah, I was taught the comma before the and was optional, you just had to be consistent. :cool:
This is as much a victim of sentence structure, poor choice of words, as it is punctuation.

Ibram , I do not put a space before a full stop when I am writing with a pen . I just do it when I am typing on a machine . As I have already explained , I have never learnt how to type formally . It is still quite a difficult exercise for me . I think because it is difficult , I have gone back in my head to being a little girl learning how to write with a quill . When we learnt , we were told to leave a space before the full stop , to avoid smudging . What I do is a sort of throwback , if you like . I must stop it . Atavistic spaces .

About the comma ; you are right , and wrong at the same time . There is no static rule , for the comma is not a static entity . It can be used as a breathing device , and it can also be used semantically .

When you say 'I like cats and dogs' , you do not need an extra breath , unless you are a serious asthmatic . However , you may need an extra breath after reciting the list of all the animals in Noah's Ark . You would put a comma before the final 'and' in the latter case .

Now , lets talk about cats and dogs in another way . We are talking about semantics i.e. implicit meaning now . We are not talking about lists any more :


'Cats , and dogs , just lurv Pussymunch croquettes !'


The implication in the above sentence is that you may be surprised to know that dogs too love this particular brand of catfood . The comma has helped us to understand the idea our interlocutor wishes to convey .

The comma is all about fine-tuning .

And now I have bored everyone into a coma .

A comma coma? :)
Not common!

I know the proper format to use when writing, but often, what I am trying to convey seems too dry and unemotional when written correctly. I prefer to write the way I speak, with pauses and interjections in addition to as much personal expression as I can work into the words.

My writing may not win any grammar or punctuation awards, but I get my point across just fine, thank ya very much :) .

Stormie

Well , yes of course , Stormieweather . I belong to the descriptive school of linguistics myself . I leave the prescriptions to the doctors . That said , the describers always start getting prescriptive after a while .

And then we churn it all up again . I love it . It means that I have job-security .

I prefer the Oxford Comma [Red, White, and Blue] because it conforms to the original intent of punctuation: a "musical notation" for the spoken word.

As someone whose mode of spoken communication resembles something like Woody Allen, or Jeff Goldblum, I agree that adhering to proper grammatical rules just doesn't always get the job done. Especially in this day and age, when long-term friendships are carried out entirely via typed text, we stretch to convey that element of humanity in our correspondance.

Better a comma coma than a bored colon.
("Rectum!? It nearly killed 'em!")

Forgetting not the difference betwen a cat and a comma...

This whole dot-comma discussion is hilarious because of the big fight I had with my sales partner. We were at the point of not trusting each other, I kept him too long w/o firing him, and we had some stupid arguments. Finally, I listened to my business advisors and fired the sales guy (who sold nothing in two years).

One of my advisors calls that incident the dot-comma bust.

Incredible how a colon can entrail so much .....

I read this whole post, for some unknown reason and have just one question - Buddog, does this post-it note of yours have a point???

:haha:

interestingly in primary school, the only place where grammar seems to matter these days, i was taught to NEVER use a comma before 'and'. i always feel rebellious if i write 'red, white, and blue' and it always looks wrong to me...