Missing Semicolon

This sentence is also a good argument that you should use the Oxford comma—the one before “and” in a list.

The inevitable centerpieces of fall’s new-hardware season are new iPhones, Windows 11 PCs and other devices from Facebook, Amazon and Google.

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-login-6392efaa-4622-4de3-b5d4-909d9d153982.html

No comma after Windows 11 PCs! The way it’s written you would include “and other devices” with Windows. But keep reading—the sentence has two lists! So the phones and Windows aren’t from Facebook, Amazon, and Google. An Oxford comma would have prevented that bump in meaning.

But wait—there’s more! Since Facebook, Amazon, and Google are a list within a list, that first list should have a semicolon instead of a comma. So here’s how the sentence should be:

The inevitable centerpieces of fall’s new-hardware season are new iPhones, Windows 11 PCs; and other devices from Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

Good punctuation reduces ambiguity.

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I ran into an article starting on page 232 in the current (Volume 109) American Scientist that uses both of these words correctly. Here’s “comprise”:

The work, comprising three stacked series of hand-etched glass panels (approximately 0.5 meter by 1 meter each) addresses resilience and plasticity in the body—a theme of damage and repair.

(Note the correct M-dash, too!)

Here’s the other sentence:

Each of the three pieces in this installation is composed of multiple glass panels stacked vertically to convey cellular elements in a three-dimensional space, or layers and depth of overlapping tissues.

And just to be sure you get it, here are the rules:

• Comprise goes from one to many, or the whole to a list of parts. In this case, work to panels
• Composed of means the same as comprise. Never say “comprised of.” So it goes from Each (singular) to multiple panels (plural).
• Compose by itself goes from parts to the whole. “Three panels compose one piece of art.”

Here’s a picture from the author’s site:

I seem to be on a pleonasm kick. I’ve posted on this subject (unnecessary words) several times lately. Well, here’s another. Can you see it?

If you said that the word “different” is unnecessary, you’d be correct. “Different is unnecessary,” hence we have a pleonasm.

I might have addressed “none” before, but this example strikes me as a good illustration of the effect of context.

After all, none is a contraction of “not (even) one.” That’s a singular, right? But the context of the word often says none of [a group of something], and we grab that plural object of “of” to signal the number of “none.” Technically, this is incorrect. We get the number of a verb from its subject, not from some modifying phrase. This is easier to say if you take out that prepositional phrase: “None is how many cookies you get before supper.”

Well, how about this example? Last panel:

Singular doesn’t feel right, does it? If she had said “not one,” the singular feels better…

Two of the cases we use in English are nominative, used for subjects of sentences and clauses; and objective, (a combination of accusative and dative used in other languages). We use the objective case for direct and indirect objects. This comic is rather low-brow, but I approve of the title.

“Who” is nominative. It’s the subject of the sentence. “Whom” is objective; its the direct object.