Coördination and the Comma

Extract

Those who consider punctuation ‘largely a matter of taste’ and look upon the so-called ‘sentence-sense’ as a kind of sixth sense that comes only from generations of gentle breeding, will regard with small favor the attempt to formulate any very definite principles governing the structure of the sentence; but those who have little faith in the subjective conclusions of capricious taste will welcome any systematic presentation of facts that may enable them to settle points of disputed usage for themselves. It is with this conviction that I offer the following contribution to the study of the sentence, not without hope that it may incite others to a more thoro investigation of related problems of English usage.