I celebrated the 4th of July by taking one more step towards the finish line. One Summer in Arkansas is on track to launch before the beginning of December.
While Nat did all the work to prepare our annual 4th of July barbeque, I reviewed the last suggested changes from the copyeditor, one of the least painful steps in the process—just check “Accept Change” or “Reject Change” and Microsoft does the rest. At this point we’re down to the classic debate about whether or not serial commas have any place in modern literature. This is when everybody reverts to their 6th grade personality, since that’s when we learned our grammar, and at this stage of life we’re not about to deviate from what our 6th grade teacher taught us. I can remember fighting the same fight in the middle of the night at many a financial printer during my life as a lawyer—a room full of entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants and investment bankers sitting around a conference table at 2:00 a.m., eating junk food and arguing (in a 6th grade tone of voice) about whether serial commas belong in the prospectus for the IPO hitting the market the next day.
Some things never change.
A serial comma is the final comma in a series of three or more words, as in "red, white, and blue." These days the final comma is often excluded: "red, white and blue."
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