Typesetting was around WAY before typewriters.

Looks like it. Note on time: 2:27 for my post. His is at 2:29. Plenty of time for me to make an edit without an edit line showing. So it remains corrected before he even calls it out.

I'm not defensive at all. I may be a bit rushed, since I've got 3 people using non-logic to say the same basic thing time and again, and I'm doing my best to respond before I have to leave.

Regarding your grammar error. You screwed up a simple rule. I pointed it out. You're the one who's been defensive about it. Look to your own self on this one.

Now, I've got to run. Have fun insisting a preference is actually a rule.

A workaround is, by its nature, intended to be temporary. A workaround rule is not usually permanent when the need for a workaround comes to an end.

The 2-space rule is correct when you are using an old-fashioned typewriter in certain fonts.

In every other case, the 2-space rule does not apply, and the use of the extra space is not correct.

The same can't be said for the Oxford Comma, there we have a real controversy with rational reasons backing up both sides.

It has nothing to do with logic. It has to do with change. Technology just improves how we can do things.

BTW there's even a PC version of the book I mentioned:

Your PC is not a typewriter

http://www.imarc.net/blog/727-your_p...t_a_typewriter

The time log disputes your claim. And it's also irrelevant to the topic.
Hey, I make typos including using its when I needed it's.

LOL If you're still in printing, you should know better. But okay.

Typesetting in the non-typewriter world was one space. The typewriter came around and they had to figure out how to deal with no kearning. So typewriter users started using two spaces. This doesn't make it right. It's a workaround that goes against established workflow. Now that typewriters are basically nonexistent, the established rules should rein.

,,,,

q

DAMMIT :banghead:

Its hilarious how devastating a single letter in a response can be.

To be fair to our friend ptlyon, the original comment was just 3 commas.

Sorry ptlyon.

I grew up with the two spaces rule, the reasoning being that it differentiates between a period used for, say, an abbreviation, and a period denoting the end of a sentence. It's a dying argument, though, because if nothing else HTML and other computer applications automatically take it out. I'm OK with that.

Regarding the Oxford Comma, however, I am resolute. There is no reason not to have it - it doesn't disrupt flow, it isn't ugly, and it doesn't confuse the message. Its benefits, however, are clear, as the Gilligan's Island example shows. I don't care what the AP says, it should be in.

The day that computers ever start automatically removing Oxford Commas is the day I set mine on fire and dump it in the river.

So was the correct answer 3 or 4?

Don't remember

Speaking of unnecessary commas...:D

Should be a period there homie