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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Criminal Sentence 198: Commas Are Not Periods

From a Web site:

"Loading, please wait…"

The punctuation of this makes it sound as if someone is telling "Loading" to please wait, as in "Bonnie, please wait." These are two separate ideas and two separate sentences that need to be separated with a period, not a comma:

"Loading. Please wait."

I've seen this on a lot of Web sites in a similar form:

"Welcome, please sign in."

Use a period, thank you. I mean Use a period. Thank you.

1 comment:

Niel said...

This simple though frequently-committed-error does kill the essence of one good communication.

Thanks!