7 ms·

Correct: there is one other person (a production assistant) and two cats. [0] [0]: https://winterbloom.com/about https://winterbloom.com/about

• a1369209993 5y ago
  > there's one other person, a production assistant, and two cats. A bit pedandic, but since we're talking about grammar anyway, that should probably be: > there's one other person (a production assistant), and two cats. As written, it sounds like the production assistant is separate from the person.
  • sodality2 5y ago
    Alternatively: > there's one other person- a production assistant- and two cats.
    • dvt 5y ago
      Because we're being pedantic, what you'd want is an em dash (—), not a hyphen (-). You would also omit the spaces. > there's one other person—a production assistant—and two cats.
      • a1369209993 5y ago
        Or a spaced hyphen ( - ), if you want to stick with ASCII/keyboard characters. > there's one other person - a production assistant - and two cats.
  • lvh 5y ago
    Thanks, I've edited my comment.
  • felipemnoa 5y ago
    >>As written, it sounds like the production assistant is separate from the person. Interesting, when I first read it I did understand that the production assistant was the person he was talking about. But yes, I can see why it could be confusing.
  • iudqnolq 5y ago
    A bit pedantic, but a parenthetical can be indicated by em dashes, parentheses, or commas. https://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html https://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html (rule 3)
    • CydeWeys 5y ago
      That's fine in isolation, but mixing that inside a comma-separated list is not a good idea.
      • iudqnolq 5y ago
        I agree, but that's a matter of style. It's technically correct. I did say pedantic.
        • a1369209993 5y ago
          Well, it's technically incorrect in that same way that system("echo "Hello, World!""); is incorrect - it mixes syntax in a ambiguous/incompatible way. It's a bit more amenable to silent autocorrect though, so YMMV.
          • pabs3 5y ago
            system() in general is incorrect, there are much better ways to run other programs, like posix_spawn, fork+exec, libpipeline etc.
            • a1369209993 5y ago
              For a non-constant argument, sure, but I was talking about the malformed string literal.
              • pabs3 5y ago
                Even for a constant argument; it is better to just start the program than to start the shell and tell it to start the program like system() does. Ack about the string literal.
  • chalst 5y ago
    > As written, it sounds like the production assistant is separate from the person. Of course you are the best judge of what English usage is ambiguous to you, but your suggestion of introducing a comma there is at odds with the convention that you can tell whether a noun following a conjunction is a subject (i e., starting a new independent clause) or an object (ie. the conjunction is bringing together two objects into one collection) by whether it follows a comma. I think your proposed cure is worse than the disease; personally I didn't find lvh's sentence at all difficult to parse. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-before-and/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/comma-before-and/
• anitil 5y ago
  Louise and Lily are definitely 10x'ers though.