cities and states
This is a little odd, I think. From the article cited here, this sentence.
Similar signs are on the streets of Dearborn, Mich., Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey and Florida.True, there's a period after the "Mich", but the list is odd. First, somebody might think that "Mich." is a city. Not likely, but someone who's not from here might. More odd, though, is that we have here two cities - one with state attached - and two states... and "New York".
Are there billboards in the city of New York, or all across the state? If the list had been "Dearborn, Mich., New York, Los Angeles, New Jersey and Florida" it would have been clearer. So would "Dearborn, Mich., Los Angeles, New Jersey, Florida and New York." For that matter, is there a New York in New Jersey? Again, the stranger to our shores might wonder.
Time for a semicolon, perhaps - and maybe a few more words.
Labels: language
3 Comments:
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At 11:35 PM, September 10, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 11:37 PM, September 10, 2007
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 5:24 AM, September 11, 2007
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Semicolons would help, yes, but a standard way to deal with a case in which only one city needs further explanation is with parentheses:
"Similar signs are on the streets of Dearborn (Mich.), Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, and Florida."
(Yes, I would add the final comma, though I know that every current style guide omits it.)
Whether "New York" is a city or a state is only a question because we don't know whether the Sun Times is being rigorous. Properly, "New York" is always the state, and the city is called "New York City". It's only a question if we can't rely on the newspaper to get that right (and my guess is that we can't, and that they meant to say "New York City").
And yes, even the New York Times would likely call the city "New York", since that's common informal usage. I'm just saying....
An afterthought:
I think I would say it like this, to make the distinction between cities and states clear with a minimal addition of words:
"Similar signs are on the streets of Dearborn (Mich.), Los Angeles, and New York, and in New Jersey and Florida."
Ah, see - now that works well. I don't know I didn't think about parentheses yesterday; as you say, it's the standard way to do this.
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