Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/270

256 dignity. The order may perhaps be given as: and, or, but, so, nor, for; conjunctions less common than these should scarcely ever be used with less than a semicolon; and many good writers would refuse to put a mere comma before for. (2) Shortness and lightness of the sentence joined on helps to lessen the need for a heavy stop. (3) Intimate connexion in thought with the preceding sentence has the same effect. Before giving our examples, which are all of undesirable commas, we point out that in the first two there are independent signs of the writers' being uneducated; and such signs will often be discoverable. It will be clear from what we have said why the others are bad—except perhaps the third; it is particularly disagreeable to have two successive independent sentences tagged on with commas, as those beginning with nor and for are in that example.

It will not be irrelevant to add here, though the point has been touched upon in Understopping, that though a light