For example,īut Jerome, we haven’t yet discussed commas. The same logic could be extended to similar constructions that might otherwise call for two commas. It wouldn’t be strictly wrong to add a comma after the conjunction in the second and fourth examples (see CMOS 6.26), but Chicago usually prefers to omit it unless the conjunction joins a compound predicate (as in the fifth example see CMOS 6.32). I carried an umbrella and, to avoid getting my feet wet, wore boots. I carried an umbrella, and to avoid getting my feet wet, I wore boots. I’d tell you how to punctuate this sentence, but I don’t want to meddle. The rule is the same as when the conjunction introduces an independent clause within a sentence (usually following a comma see CMOS 6.22): For example, both of the following would be correct:Īnd to avoid getting my feet wet, I wore boots. This same usage could be seen at about the same time in Spanish in the novel Don Quixote ( 1605 for the first volume).īack to the present: nobody puts spaces before commas in published prose anymore, and there are only two common scenarios in which the space after the comma is customarily omitted: next to a closing quotation mark, “like this,” and between digits in numbers like 1,132.Ī. In English, such commas with no space before or after can be seen in the earliest printings of the King James Bible (1611). Go back even earlier in time, and the practice was to remove the space after the comma also-à la your academic friend-but only to accommodate very tight lines of justified text. The latter were exempt, “parce que ces trois lettres portent un blanc suffisamment fort par en bas” (i.e., those three letters already leave enough space along the baseline see Lefèvre, p. In Lefèvre’s book, space appears before commas, with two exceptions: (a) where the line of type is too crowded to allow for any and (b) next to r’s, v’s, and y’s. Lefèvre to observe that not only is this unfortunate (“vicieux” is as bad as it sounds), but worse, it’s happening more and more in French works. That first line of text (in a detail from page 182) says that in English practice there’s no space between a comma (“virgule” in French) and the word that it’s next to (i.e., the word that it follows). Guide pratique du compositeur d’imprimerie, a manual on typesetting by the printer Théotiste Lefèvre that was first published in 1855, reveals as much in a footnote that appears in a section on English composition: As recently as the nineteenth century, spaces before commas were common, at least in French. Not that there isn’t a precedent for such usage. We admire the economy of such a habit, but we can’t endorse it. * MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021), 2.13 AP Stylebook (56th ed, 2022), under “comma” Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed., 2020), 6.3 AMA Manual of Style (11th ed., 2020), 8.2.1.9 GPO Style Manual (2016 ed.), 8.53 Microsoft Style Guide, “Commas” (June 24, 2022) Apple Style Guide (October 2022 ed.), under “dates.”Ī. Verdict: Your law clerks aren’t wrong in this case. (A look at the Harvard Law Review’s website suggests a preference for the second comma.) But we’d be surprised if The Bluebook’s editors didn’t support the additional comma in a sentence like yours. The decision of January 10, 2023, was unexpected.Īs for legal contexts, The Bluebook (the legal citation guide published by the Harvard Law Review Association) doesn’t seem to specify how to punctuate dates outside of citations (where a comma might follow a year but for other reasons). The January 10, 2023, decision was unexpected. But when the date is used as a modifier before a noun, the result can seem awkward, and some guides-including CMOS (in paragraph 5.83)-recommend rephrasing if possible: The idea is that the year is parenthetical-November 3 (2021)-and in your example this usage is relatively straightforward. The guides from Microsoft and Apple also support this rule.* This includes not only CMOS (see paragraph 6.38) but also the guides from the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Associated Press (AP), the American Psychological Association (APA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the US Government Publishing Office (GPO). Most style guides published in North America (where the “Month Day, Year” format is preferred) will tell you to use that second comma (the one after the year).
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