was she trying for irony?

[cellio]

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation sounds like a great book for grammar nerds, but I am put off somewhat by the 1.5 punctuation errors in the title. (One is debatable and might be excused by context (it refers to a joke containing the phrase); the other is clearly wrong.)

Comments

[cellio]

the extra comma would be marked as incorrect

Interesting. So is the following really punctuated correctly according to those who would do that marking? "jazz, rhythm and blues and Peter, Paul and Mary"

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Um, not sure. I know that items in a list must be separated by a comma unless there's an and, but your example is properly two separate things so I think it could go either way.

Having said that, despite having picked up a very keen sense of grammar over the years I didn't get much formal tuition in it, so the finer points sometimes elude me, time to reach for Fowler's English Grammar and Usage for a definitive version!