Hi, I'm back in the game after a 12, or 13-year hiatus (notice the extra comma?) and shortly before I left, the Arkati histories had been released, which I read (or skimmed). However, I haven't been able to find anything like that in these boards. Does wordsmithing pertain to histories, or is it something more mundane, like commas? ;)
p.s. When I was in high school, early 80s, we were taught not to put the comma before "and", but inside the quotations (what I didn't do just now). In the ham and beans example, if that is one dish, it should be:
For dinner I had bread, beer, and ham and beans.
If ham and beans are two separate dishes:
For dinner I had bread, beer, ham and beans.
The first of two "and"s would be required in the first instance. However, the writer saying that one must deliberately construct a sentence that would not occur 'in nature' is correct; even when speaking one would automatically try to construct the sentence differently, such as:
For dinner I had ham and beans, bread, butter and beer.
Obviously you're not saying you had the dish butter-and-beer. ;)
