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"Avoid the so-called Oxford comma; say 'he ate bread, butter and jam' rather than 'he ate bread, butter, and jam'." The Economist Style Guide [49] "Do not put a comma before and at the end of a sequence of items unless one of the items includes another and. Thus 'The doctor suggested an aspirin, half a grapefruit and a cup of broth.
The comma, is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature filled-in figure 9 placed on the baseline.
Punctuation in the English language helps the reader to understand a sentence through visual means other than just the letters of the alphabet. [1] English punctuation has two complementary aspects: phonological punctuation, linked to how the sentence can be read aloud, particularly to pausing; [2] and grammatical punctuation, linked to the structure of the sentence. [3]
The question comma has a comma instead of the dot at the bottom of a question mark, while the exclamation comma has a comma in place of the point at the bottom of an exclamation mark. These were intended for use as question and exclamation marks within a sentence, a function for which normal question and exclamation marks can also be used, but ...
The section on syntax formulates, among other things, a rule on the use of transitive conjunctions when subjects are identical. The grammatical norm codified by Dobrovský was generally accepted, not only because of his scientific authority, but above all because it suited the effort to differentiate the literary language from common usage.
When the affirmative already uses auxiliary verbs (I am going), no other auxiliary verbs are added to negate the clause (I am not going). (Until the period of early Modern English, negation was effected without additional auxiliary verbs: I go not.) Most combinations of auxiliary verbs etc. with not have contracted forms: don't, can't, isn't, etc
Do not use articles (a, an, or the) as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless it is an inseparable part of a name (The Hague) or of the title of a work (A Clockwork Orange, The Simpsons). Normally use nouns or noun phrases: Early life, not In early life. [f]
A leading pound sign #, in column 1 of a line, causes the line to be displayed as an auto-numbered line in a list of numbered entries. The numbered line can be indented further by prepending a pound sign ## or two ### or three #### or such, for more indentation, each of which creates a new enumerated list.