Punctuation Matters [A Rant]

If you consult your Stunk and White, or your eighth grade grammar textbook, you will learn that writing clear sentences requires placing a comma before the word and in a series. Hooray for the red, white, and blue.

Some years ago, though, somebody decided that the last comma in that sentence took up too much ink, or space, or something, and now you will find far too many journals that should know better writing that sentence as Hooray for the red, white and blue. Not so bad, you might say. I understand what the writer means, and that's what's important, right?

And if we never had a complex thought, that would be just fine. But every once in a while we try to mix things together to share information in interesting ways, and that's where the danger lies.

I just happen to have an example here. Today we learn in the New York Times that Annie Liebovitz was in an incestuous relationship with her mother, Susan Sontag!

In the last five years, Ms. Leibovitz lost her father, her mother and her companion, Susan Sontag; added two children to her family and oversaw the costly and controversial renovation of three properties in Greenwich Village.

Let's not even talk about that semi-colon. Good Lord.