How many meteorites?
I recently did a presentation on punctuation. One of the rules was about commas in dates: If there's a comma before the year, there should be one after it, too. For instance, this (from a correspondent at The Loom) is incorrectly punctuated:
On September 28, 2004 our daughter Christina (a.k.a. Pinky) was born.But why? I mean, it's clear, isn't it? Sure... but how about this, from the same source:
On September 28, 1969 meteorites fell in Murchison, Australia.Wow. That's a lot of meteorites!
2 Comments:
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At 12:51 PM, April 26, 2009
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 6:51 PM, April 26, 2009
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->I've always thought the commas in dates to be an odd custom — I put them there, but I'm not happy about them: they feel like they turn the year into a non-restrictive element, which it's not.
I feel the same way with commas in place names: "When I visited Moscow, Idaho, I stopped at the university." There are other places called Moscow, of course, so "Idaho" is necessary.
I'm not sure what to do about it, though — the commas serve a different purpose to the ones that set off non-restrictive clauses. Still, as I say, it's always seemed odd to me.
Commas set off other things than non-restrictive clauses - like apposites or vocatives or adverbials.
I suppose you could leave it out with years, as long as you didn't put one in front, either.
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