> And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. But what bothers me (enough to eventually w

> And my personal conventions for usage can be different than yours. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. But what bothers me (enough to eventually write a comment) is not that others’ conventions differ — it’s that they don't have conventions at all. Words are just strewn all over the page with abandon and anyone who questions it is told to piss off, usually via a long counter-rant laced with moral superiority and mentions of the standard buzzword ‘prescriptivism’. I suspect it’s because it’s deeply insulting and humiliating to be told you’re ignorant about something so seemingly basic, and almost everyone is ignorant when it comes to effective punctuation. > If that rule works for you, great. You give people too much credit. It’s not that they’ve tried several styles and eventually landed on this one as a matter of personal taste. They’ve never even noticed the difference. Again: that there are ‘no formal rules’ for language use does not imply there’s zero value in caring how language is used and trying to keep it consistent and logical.