Punctuation question

Factual Questions
1

So there’s this sentance floating around work and there’s some argument going as to how it should be written.

The sentance is:

Take an energetic approach to understanding meeting/exceeding and solving a variety of customer needs and expectation.

I and a co-worker think that it should be punctuated like so:

Take an energetic approach to understanding*, meeting/exceeding,** and solving a variety of customer needs and expectation.*

Three items, two commas. Others think that the second comma isn’t needed, that the word “and” in that sentance takes the place of a comma.

I was under the impression that commas seperate all items in a list, and the word “and” or the word “or” only signifies the end of the list and that to be correct a second comma before the word is still required.

What say we?

2

The comma after “understanding” is essential; the comma after “exceeding” is optional, and depends on what style you follow. (Generally, Americans would have a comma there, but British would not).

3

I say it depends on what style book you’re following. You’re talking about what’s known as a serial comma. The Chicago Manual of Style advocates its use. Associated Press style is against its use (except in ambiguous situations.) Although I was trained in Associated Press style, I have come to prefer keeping the serial comma.

4

Is there any guideline as to which style would be preferred for techinal writing, as the above sentance is clearly intended for a job discription.

5

In that sentence, i would keep the second comma, because otherwise the slash between “meeting” and “exceeding” looks like it breaks up the whole sentence, rather than just those two words.

Now that the comma thing is out of the way, though, i’d recommend rewriting the whole sentence. As it is, it’s a bit of an abomination of awkwardness and poor agreement.

Apart from the imperative that begins the sentence (“Take”), you have four verbs there:

understanding
meeting
exceeding
solving

which modify two nouns (or noun groups):

customer needs
[customer] expectation

First, i think there should be an “s” on the end of expectation. The phrase is generally “to [meet/exceed] expectations.”

Second, the slash is unnecessary, in my opinion.

Third, while you can “understand” someone’s needs and expectations, and you can “meet” someone’s needs and expectations, and you can even “exceed” someone’s needs and expectations, it’s not really correct to say that you can “solve” someone’s needs and expectations. If you’re going to have “solve” in that sentence, you need it to modify something appropriate, like “problems.”

Personally, i’d write something like:

Take an energetic approach to understanding customers’ needs, meeting or exceeding their expectations, and solving their problems.

It has exactly the same number of words are the original, but is more grammatically correct, and reads more smoothly.

Just MHO.

6

“Sentence”, people, please. Also, shouldn’t it be “expectations”?

Simulpost on the latter.

7

Yes, “expectations” should be pluralized, I threw this out in a hurry, sorry.

8

[quote=“mhendo, post:5, topic:486426”]

As it is, it’s a bit of an abomination of awkwardness and poor agreement.
QUOTE]

Aren’t all mission statements? I know the ones I’ve seen have been. It’s like the standard is “Let’s see how many words we can use to make a statement of the obvious.”

9

I think the term “meeting/exceeding” causes the list to have a minor level of ambiguity. If the second comma is not present (i.e., if the list reads “understanding, meeting/exceeding and solving”), then the reader has to pause momentarily to decide which of two possible structures is implied.

In the first possible structure, the list has three elements, the second of which is itself composed of two elements, as follows:

  1. Understanding
    2a. Meeting
    2b. Exceeding
  2. Solving

In the second possible structure, the list has two elements, the second of which is composed of two elements, as follows:

  1. Understanding
    2a. Meeting
    2b. Exceeding and solving

Presumably, the reader will quickly realize that the second structure is not likely to be what is meant, because in that case there would have been an “and” rather than a comma between “understanding” and “meeting”. However, the damage has been done: The reader’s train of thought was unnecessarily broken by an ungainly construction.

Thus, I would advocate putting in the second comma (i.e., “understanding, meeting/exceeding, and solving”), just to prevent readers from running over that bump in the road.

10

I would always use the serial comma unless I’m writing for a publication that follows Associated Press guidelines. People don’t generally consider its inclusion wrong. Newspaper folks (who usually omit it) will just see it as unnecessary or extraneous. However, some people do consider its omission “wrong.”

11

Nice. I’m off to pick up a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style for future assistance. Hopefully it’s heavy enough I can bash some sense into someone’s head with it.

This is why our economy is going down the tubes. Instead of working we spend an hour arguing over where a comma belongs in a job discription designed for people who don’t even need a goddamned high school education. :slight_smile:

12

As mhendo noted, the real problem with the original sentence wasn’t so much the missing comma as the clumsiness of the writing. It usually pays off to spend some time transforming badly written sentences into clear and meaningful ones. And you will stand a better chance of catching the eye of better-quality applicants if your job description is formulated in correctly written standard English.