That works, but I thought about it a bit, and I think we are all approaching the issue of book dedications from the wrong direction anyways. Book dedications ar

That works, but I thought about it a bit, and I think we are all approaching the issue of book dedications from the wrong direction anyways. Book dedications are typically by themselves on a single page, so it seems like the best option would be to use whitespace to clarify meaning. I dedicate this book to: My mother, Ayn Rand And to God This also gets at the heart of the matter, which is that a lot of style guides are taken from publications that are trying to squeeze as much text in to a given space as possible. If you are writing something where space is not at a premium, such as a law, or the dedication in a book, you should probably ignore suggestions that are meant to save space. I think on some level writers are a bit like programmers, in the sense that writing a really clever Perl one-liner feels great, but if you have to go back and read what you've written later Python is probably a much better option.