Maybe I’m too Literal

But this is a good point.

Be careful of figures of speech when you’re writing technical material.

Here’s the quote:

Her achievements fill the book? How about descriptions of her achievements? I’m pretty sure the book doesn’t contain pages of calculations and telescopes. Full disclosure: that’s taken from Nature Briefing, which references the article itself, which is at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00734-4 and the article gets it right (emphasis mine):

Here’s Vera. Oops, I mean a picture of Vera. The article has more photos, and it’s interesting, too.

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In the grammatical sense anyway. One of my hobby horses is to oppose putting “only” too soon in the sentence. Do a search on only to find more examples.

Many people put “only” in the location equivalent to right before “toilets,” but if you put it there, the error is too obvious to miss.

You could argue that the really correct place for “only” would be before “someone.” That allows for the toilet to work at least some of the time at someone else’s house.

This is the last one from my Bank of America days. Maybe I’ll go back to using the funnies!

The Oxford comma

The rule: When you have a list of three or more things, put a comma before the conjunction. Common conjunctions:

• And
• Or
• And also/even
• As well as

Good:

• Trains, planes, and automobiles
• She not only likes red, blue, and green, but also chartreuse
• Would you like the steak, the fish, or the cauliflower?

Bad:

• Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800 year-old demigod and a dildo collector” [Do the encounters include one person or three?]  —quote from The Times

So—

• If you don’t use the Oxford comma, sometimes you can be misunderstood
• If you use the Oxford comma, you will never be misunderstood

Subject-verb agreement

The rule: A singular subject gets a singular verb, a plural subject gets a plural verb

What’s the subject in this sentence? A list of customer accounts has three items.

It’s “list,” even though the verb is right next to a plural noun. So the singular noun gets a singular verb, “has.”

Here’s a tricky one: We have here a list of items that occur/occurs in an error condition.

Is it the list that occurs, or is it the items that occur?

It’s the items!

So—

Be alert for what the subject is! It can make a big difference in what you say.

When should you use “that,” and when do you use “which”?

The rule:

• Use “that” in restrictive clauses
• Use “which” in non-restrictive clauses

HUH?

• If the information is necessary, that’s restrictive. For example: “…includes an account that has been set up within the modeled organization’s General Ledger…”
• If the info is just added info, that’s non-restrictive. For example: “…includes uncollected funds, which is what distinguishes it from collected balance…”

Rule of thumb: “Which” follows a comma, “that” doesn’t.

Here’s a rather busy example: “…an account that has been set up that includes uncollected funds, which is what distinguishes it from collected balance”

Another rule of thumb: Using “which” when you mean “that” is being pretentious. It’s fancier than necessary. If “that” works, don’t use “which.”