The Elements of Style

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Elements of Style

First expanded edition (1959)
Author	William Strunk Jr. (1918/1920) and E. B. White (1959)
Illustrator	Maira Kalman (2005 only)
Country	United States
Subject	American English style guide
Publisher	Harcourt, Brace & Howe (1920) Macmillan (1959) Allyn & Bacon (1999)
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	43 (1918), 52 (1920), 71 (1959), 105 (1999)
OCLC	27652766
Dewey Decimal	808/.042 21
LC Class	PE1421 .S7 (Strunk) PE1408 .S772 (Strunk & White)

The Elements of Style is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was composed by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of 57 "words often misspelled". E. B. White greatly enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of the so-called Strunk & White, which Time named in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.

History

Cornell University English professor William Strunk Jr. wrote The Elements of Style in 1918 and privately published it in 1919, for use at the university. (Harcourt republished it in 52-page format in 1920.) He and editor Edward A. Tenney later revised it for publication as The Elements and Practice of Composition (1935). In 1957 the style guide reached the attention of E.B. White at The New Yorker. White had studied writing under Strunk in 1919 but had since forgotten "the little book" that he described as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English". Weeks later, White wrote a feature story about Strunk's devotion to lucid English prose.

Macmillan and Company subsequently commissioned White to revise The Elements for a 1959 edition (Strunk had died in 1946). White's expansion and modernization of Strunk and Tenney's 1935 revised edition yielded the writing style manual informally known as "Strunk & White", the first edition of which sold about two million copies in 1959. More than ten million copies of three editions were later sold. Mark Garvey relates the history of the book in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (2009).

Maira Kalman, who provided the illustrations for The Elements of Style Illustrated (2005, see below), asked Nico Muhly to compose a cantata based on the book. It was performed at the New York Public Library in October 2005.

Audiobook versions of The Elements now feature changed wording, citing "gender issues" with the original.

Content

Strunk concentrated on the cultivation of good writing and composition; the original 1918 edition exhorted writers to "omit needless words", use the active voice, and employ parallelism appropriately.

The 1959 edition features White's expansions of preliminary sections, the "Introduction" essay (derived from his magazine feature story about Prof. Strunk), and the concluding chapter, "An Approach to Style", a broader, prescriptive guide to writing in English. He also produced the second (1972) and third (1979) editions of The Elements of Style, by which time the book's length had extended to 85 pages.

The third edition of The Elements of Style (1979) features 54 points: a list of common word-usage errors; 11 rules of punctuation and grammar; 11 principles of writing; 11 matters of form; and, in Chapter V, 21 reminders for better style. The final reminder, the 21st, "Prefer the standard to the offbeat", is thematically integral to the subject of The Elements of Style, yet does stand as a discrete essay about writing lucid prose. To write well, White advises writers to have the proper mind-set, that they write to please themselves, and that they aim for "one moment of felicity", a phrase by Robert Louis Stevenson. Thus Strunk's 1918 recommendation:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.

— "Elementary Principles of Composition", The Elements of Style

Strunk Jr. no longer has a comma in his name in the 1979 and later editions, due to the modernized style recommendation about punctuating such names.

The fourth edition of The Elements of Style (2000), published 54 years after Strunk's death, omits his stylistic advice about masculine pronouns: "unless the antecedent is or must be feminine". In its place, the following sentence has been added: "many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive." Further, the re-titled entry "They. He or She", in Chapter IV: Misused Words and Expressions, advises the writer to avoid an "unintentional emphasis on the masculine".

Components new to the fourth edition include a foreword by Roger Angell, stepson of E. B. White, an afterword by the American cultural commentator Charles Osgood, a glossary, and an index. Five years later, the fourth edition text was re-published as The Elements of Style Illustrated (2005), with illustrations by the designer Maira Kalman. This edition excludes the afterword by Osgood and restores the first edition chapter on spelling.

Reception

The Elements of Style was listed as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923 by Time in its 2011 list. Upon its release, Charles Poor, writing for The New York Times, called it "a splendid trophy for all who are interested in reading and writing." American poet Dorothy Parker has, regarding the book, said:

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

Criticism of Strunk & White has largely focused on claims that it has a prescriptivist nature, or that it has become a general anachronism in the face of modern English usage.

In criticizing The Elements of Style, Geoffrey Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, and co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), said that:

The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules ... It's sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write however or than me or was or which, but can't tell you why.

Pullum has argued, for example, that the authors misunderstood what constitutes the passive voice, and he criticized their proscription of established and unproblematic English usages, such as the split infinitive and the use of which in a restrictive relative clause. On Language Log, a blog about language written by linguists, he further criticized The Elements of Style for promoting linguistic prescriptivism and hypercorrection among Anglophones, and called it "the book that ate America's brain".

The Boston Globe's review described The Elements of Style Illustrated (2005), with illustrations by Maira Kalman, as an "aging zombie of a book ... a hodgepodge, its now-antiquated pet peeves jostling for space with 1970s taboos and 1990s computer advice".

In On Writing (2000, p. 11), Stephen King writes: "There is little or no detectable bullshit in that book. (Of course, it's short; at eighty-five pages it's much shorter than this one.) I'll tell you right now that every aspiring writer should read The Elements of Style. Rule 17 in the chapter titled Principles of Composition is 'Omit needless words.' I will try to do that here."

In 2011, Tim Skern remarked (perhaps equivocally) that The Elements of Style "remains the best book available on writing good English".

In 2013, Nevile Gwynne reproduced The Elements of Style in his work Gwynne's Grammar. Britt Peterson of the Boston Globe wrote that it was a "curious addition".

In 2016, the Open Syllabus Project lists The Elements of Style as the most frequently assigned text in US academic syllabuses, based on an analysis of 933,635 texts appearing in over 1 million syllabuses.

Editions

Strunk

• Elements of Style. Composed in 1918 and privately printed in 1919. 43 pages. OCLC 6589433.
• The Elements of Style. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920. 52-page publication of the original.

(Because the text of Strunk's original is now in the public domain and freely available on the Internet, publishers can and do reprint it in book form.)

Strunk & Edward A. Tenney

• The Elements and Practice of Composition. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935. Despite the new title, an expansion of (The) Elements of Style; 60 pages plus 47 "practice leaves". OCLC 781988921

Strunk & White

• The Elements of Style. New York: Macmillan, 1959. OCLC 878906498.
• The Elements of Style. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1972. ISBN 0024182605.
• The Elements of Style. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1988. ISBN 0024181900 (hardback), ISBN 0024182001 (paperback).
• The Elements of Style. 4th ed. S.l.: Longman, 1999. Hardback. ISBN 0-205-31342-6 (hardback). S.l.: Longman, 2000. ISBN 0-205-30902-X (paperback). With a foreword by Roger Angell.
• The Elements of Style Illustrated. With illustrations by Maira Kalman. Penguin, 2005. ISBN 1-594-20069-6 (hardback). Penguin, 2005. ISBN 9780910301961 (hardback). Penguin. ISBN 9780143112723 (paperback). Penguin, 2008. ISBN 9781439562635 (paperback).
• The Elements of Style. Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. ISBN 0-205-63264-5. Contains the 4th ed. text; with a foreword by Charles Osgood.

Serial comma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In English language punctuation, a serial comma, or series comma (also called an Oxford comma or Harvard comma), is a comma placed immediately after the penultimate term (i.e. before the coordinating conjunction [usually and or or]) in a series of three or more terms. For example, a list of three countries might be punctuated either as "France, Italy and Spain" (without the serial comma) or "France, Italy, and Spain" (with the serial comma).

Opinions among writers and editors differ on whether to use the serial comma, and usage also differs somewhat between regional varieties of English. British English allows constructions with or without this comma, while in American English it is common and sometimes even considered mandatory to use the comma. A majority of American style guides mandate use of the serial comma, including APA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Garner's Modern American Usage, The MLA Style Manual, Strunk and White's Elements of Style and the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual. By contrast, the Associated Press Stylebook advises against it. In Canada, the stylebook published by The Canadian Press advises against it. Most British style guides do not mandate its use. The Economist Style Guide notes that most British writers only use it where necessary to avoid ambiguity. However, a few British style guides mandate it, most notably The Oxford Style Manual.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language notes that, "Usage varies as to the inclusion of a comma before and in the last item ... This practice is controversial and is known as the serial comma or Oxford comma, because it is part of the house style of Oxford University Press." There are cases in which the use of the serial comma can avoid ambiguity (see Resolving ambiguity) and also instances in which its use can introduce ambiguity (see Creating ambiguity).

Arguments for and against

Common arguments for consistent use of the serial comma:

1. Use of the comma is consistent with the conventional practice of the region.
2. It matches the spoken cadence of sentences better.
3. It can resolve ambiguity (see examples below).
4. Its use is consistent with other means of separating items in a list (for example, when semicolons are used to separate items, one is always included before the last item).
5. Its omission may suggest a stronger connection between the last two items in a series than actually exists.

Common arguments against consistent use of the serial comma:

1. Use of the comma is inconsistent with the conventional practice of the region.
2. It can introduce ambiguity.
3. Where space is at a premium, the comma adds unnecessary bulk to the text.

Many sources are against both systematic use and systematic avoidance of the serial comma, making recommendations in a more nuanced way.

Ambiguity

Resolving ambiguity

Omitting the serial comma may create ambiguity. Writers who normally avoid the serial comma often use one when it avoids ambiguity. Consider this apocryphal book dedication:

To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.

There is ambiguity about the writer's parentage, because "Ayn Rand and God" can be read as in apposition to my parents, leading the reader to believe that the writer claims Ayn Rand and God are the parents. A comma before and removes the ambiguity:

To my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

But lists can also be written in other ways that eliminate the ambiguity without introducing the serial comma, such as by changing the word order or by using other punctuation, or none, to introduce or delimit them (though the emphasis may thereby be changed):

To God, Ayn Rand and my parents.

An example collected by Nielsen Hayden was found in a newspaper account of a documentary about Merle Haggard:

Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

A serial comma following "Kris Kristofferson" would help prevent this being understood as Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall being the ex-wives in question.

Another example is:

My usual breakfast is coffee, bacon and eggs and toast.

It is unclear whether the eggs are being grouped with the bacon or the toast. Adding a serial comma removes this ambiguity:

My usual breakfast is coffee, bacon and eggs, and toast.

Creating ambiguity

In some circumstances using the serial comma can create ambiguity. If the book dedication above is changed to

To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God

the serial comma after Ayn Rand creates ambiguity about the writer's mother because it uses punctuation identical to that used for an appositive phrase, leaving it unclear whether this is a list of three entities (1, my mother; 2, Ayn Rand; and 3, God) or of only two entities (1, my mother, who is Ayn Rand; and 2, God).

Unresolved ambiguity

The Times once published an unintentionally humorous description of a Peter Ustinov documentary, noting that "highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector". This would still be ambiguous if a serial comma were added, as Mandela could still be mistaken for a demigod, although he would be precluded from being a dildo collector.

Or consider

They went to Oregon with Betty, a maid, and a cook.

This is ambiguous because it is unclear whether "a maid" is an appositive describing Betty, or the second in a list of three people. On the other hand, removing the final comma:

They went to Oregon with Betty, a maid and a cook.

leaves the possibility that Betty is both a maid and a cook (with "a maid and a cook" read as a unit, in apposition to Betty). So in this case neither the serial-comma style nor the no-serial-comma style resolves the ambiguity. A writer who intends a list of three distinct people (Betty, maid, cook) may create an ambiguous sentence, regardless of whether the serial comma is adopted. Furthermore, if the reader is unaware of which convention is being used, both versions are always ambiguous.

These forms (among others) would remove the ambiguity:

• One person
  • They went to Oregon with Betty, who was a maid and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with Betty, both a maid and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with Betty (a maid and cook).
  • They went to Oregon with Betty, their maid and cook.
• Two people
  • They went to Oregon with Betty (a maid) and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with Betty – a maid – and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with Betty, a maid, and with a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with the maid Betty and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with a cook and Betty, a maid.
• Three people
  • They went to Oregon with Betty, as well as a maid and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with Betty and a maid and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with Betty, one maid and a cook.
  • They went to Oregon with a maid, a cook, and Betty.
  • They went to Oregon with a maid, a cook and Betty.
  • They went with Betty to Oregon with a maid and a cook.

In general

• The list x, y and z is unambiguous if y and z cannot be read as in apposition to x.
• Equally, x, y, and z is unambiguous if y cannot be read as in apposition to x.
• If neither y nor y[,] and z can be read as in apposition to x, then both forms of the list are unambiguous; but if both y and y and z can be read as in apposition to x, then both forms of the list are ambiguous.
• x and y and z is unambiguous if x and y and y and z cannot both be grouped.

Ambiguities can often be resolved by the selective use of semicolons instead of commas; this is sometimes called the "super comma" function of semicolons.

Recommendations by style guides

Lynne Truss writes: "There are people who embrace the Oxford comma, and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken."

Omitting a serial comma is often characterized as a journalistic style of writing, as contrasted with a more academic or formal style. Journalists typically do not use the serial comma, possibly for economy of space. In Australia, Canada and South Africa, the serial comma tends not to be used in non-academic publications unless its absence produces ambiguity.

It is important that usage within a document be consistent; inconsistent usage can seem unprofessional.

Mainly American style guides supporting mandatory or typical use

The United States Government Printing Office's Style Manual

"After each member within a series of three or more words, phrases, letters, or figures used with and, or, or nor." It notes that an age ("70 years 11 months 6 days") is not a series and should not take commas.

Wilson Follett's Modern American Usage: A Guide (Random House, 1981), pp. 397–401

"What, then, are the arguments for omitting the last comma? Only one is cogent – the saving of space. In the narrow width of a newspaper column this saving counts for more than elsewhere, which is why the omission is so nearly universal in journalism. But here or anywhere one must question whether the advantage outweighs the confusion caused by the omission. … The recommendation here is that [writers] use the comma between all members of a series, including the last two, on the common-sense ground that to do so will preclude ambiguities and annoyances at a negligible cost."

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition (University of Chicago Press, 2010), paragraph 6.18

"When a conjunction joins the last two elements in a series of three or more, a comma … should appear before the conjunction. Chicago strongly recommends this widely practiced usage." In answer to a reader's query, The Chicago Manual of Style Online notes that their style guide has been recommending use of the serial comma ever since the first edition in 1906, but also qualifies this, saying "the serial comma is optional; some mainstream style guides (such as the Associated Press) don't use it. … there are times when using the comma (or omitting it) results in ambiguity, which is why it's best to stay flexible."

The Elements of Style (Strunk and White, 4th edition 1999), Rule 2

"In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last." This has been recommended in The Elements of Style since the first edition by Strunk in 1918.

The American Medical Association Manual of Style, 9th edition (1998) Chapter 6.2.1

"Use a comma before the conjunction that precedes the last term in a series."

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition (2010) Chapter 4.03

"Use a comma between elements (including before and and or) in a series of three or more items."

The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (Council of Science Editors, 7th edition, 2006), Section 5.3.3.1

"To separate the elements (words, phrases, clauses) of a simple series of more than 2 elements, including a comma before the closing 'and' or 'or' (the so-called serial comma). Routine use of the serial comma helps to prevent ambiguity."

Garner's Modern English Usage, 4th edition (Oxford University Press, 2016), "Punctuation," § D, "Comma", p. 748

"Whether to include the serial comma has sparked many arguments. But it's easily answered in favor of inclusion because omitting the final comma may cause ambiguities, whereas including it never will – e.g.: 'A and B, C and D, E and F[,] and G and H'."

MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (Modern Language Association 2008), paragraph 3.4.2.b

"Use commas to separate words, phrases, and clauses in a series."

AAMT Book of Style for Medical Transcription

"Medical transcriptionists use the serial comma when two medications or diagnoses must be seen as separate; i.e., for 'The patient was on Aspirin, Coversyl, and Dilaudid', the comma is used before 'and' to avoid the reader erroneously thinking that Coversyl and Dilaudid must be taken together."

AIP Style Manual, American Institute of Physics, fourth edition, 1990

"A comma goes before 'and' or 'or' in a series of three or more: Sn, K, Na, and Li lines are invisible."

Plain English Handbook, Revised Edition (McCormick-Mathers Publishing Co., 1959), § 483, p. 78

"Use commas to separate the items in a series of words, phrases, or short clauses:

    The farmer sold corn, hay, oats, potatoes, and wheat."

Mainly British style guides supporting mandatory or typical use

The Oxford Style Manual, 2002

"For a century it has been part of OUP style to retain or impose this last serial (or series) comma consistently, … but it is commonly used by many other publishers both here and abroad, and forms a routine part of style in US and Canadian English. … Given that the final comma is sometimes necessary to prevent ambiguity, it is logical to impose it uniformly, so as to obviate the need to pause and gauge each enumeration on the likelihood of its being misunderstood – especially since that likelihood is often more obvious to the reader than the writer."

MHRA Style Guide (Modern Humanities Research Association), 3rd edition (2013)

"In an enumeration of three or more items, the practice in MHRA journals is to insert commas after all but the last item, to give equal weight to each enumerated element.  … The conjunctions and and or without a preceding comma are understood as linking the parts of a single enumerated element"

But paragraph 5.1 says "The comma after the penultimate item may be omitted in books published by the MHRA, as long as the sense is clear."

Mainly British style guides opposing typical use

The Times style manual

"Avoid the so-called Oxford comma; say 'he ate bread, butter and jam' rather than 'he ate bread, butter, and jam'."

The Economist Style Guide

"Do not put a comma before and at the end of a sequence of items unless one of the items includes another and. Thus 'The doctor suggested an aspirin, half a grapefruit and a cup of broth. But he ordered scrambled eggs, whisky and soda, and a selection from the trolley.'"

"Sometimes it is essential: compare 'I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis, and JK Rowling' with 'I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis and JK Rowling'."

University of Oxford Public Affairs Directorate Writing and Style Guide

"Note that there is generally no comma between the penultimate item and 'and'/'or' – this is sometimes referred to as the 'Oxford comma'. However, it is essential to use an Oxford comma if required to prevent ambiguity."

Mainly British style guides that consider it generally unnecessary but discretionary

The Guardian Style Guide

"A comma before the final 'and' in lists: straightforward ones (he ate ham, eggs and chips) do not need one, but sometimes it can help the reader (he ate cereal, kippers, bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade, and tea)."

The Cambridge Guide to English Usage

"In British practice there's an Oxford/Cambridge divide … In Canada and Australia the serial comma is recommended only to prevent ambiguity or misreading."

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 4th edition, 2015

"The so-called 'Oxford comma' is an optional comma that follows the penultimate item in a list of three or more items and precedes the word 'and' ... The general rule is that it should be used consistently or not at all ... However, the Oxford comma can help to avoid ambiguity, ... and it is sometimes helpful to the reader to use an isolated serial comma for clarification, even when the convention has not been adopted in the rest of the text."

New Hart's Rules, 2014

"The general rule is that one style or the other should be used consistently. However, the last comma can serve to resolve ambiguity, particularly when any of the items are compound terms joined by a conjunction, and it is sometimes helpful to the reader to use an isolated serial comma for clarification even when the convention has not been adopted in the rest of the text."

Mainly American style guides opposing typical use

The New York Times stylebook

"In general, do not use a comma before and or or in a series."

The AP Stylebook

"Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series. […] Put a comma before the concluding conjunction in a series, however, if an integral element of the series requires a conjunction: I had orange juice, toast, and ham and eggs for breakfast. Use a comma also before the concluding conjunction in a complex series of phrases: The main points to consider are whether the athletes are skillful enough to compete, whether they have the stamina to endure the training, and whether they have the proper mental attitude. In the United States, the choice is between journalistic style (no serial comma) and "literary" style (with serial comma); consistent use of the serial comma is usually recommended for college writing."

Australian style guides opposing typical use

The Australian Government Publishing Service's Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers

"A comma is used before and, or, or etc. in a list when its omission might either give rise to ambiguity or cause the last word or phrase to be construed with a preposition in the preceding phrase. … Generally, however, a comma is not used before and, or or etc. in a list."

Canadian style guides opposing typical use

Public Works and Government Services Canada Translation Bureau's The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing

"Items in a series may be separated by commas:

Complacency, urbanity, sentimentality, whimsicality

They may also be linked by co-ordinating conjunctions such as and or or:

economists, sociologists or political scientists

the good, the bad and the ugly

Opinions differ on whether and when a comma should be inserted before the final and or or in a sequence. In keeping with the general trend toward less punctuation, the final comma is best omitted where clarity permits, unless there is a need to emphasize the last element in a series."

Individual disputes

Maine labor dispute

In the U.S. state of Maine, the lack of a serial comma became the deciding factor in a $13 million lawsuit filed in 2014 that was eventually settled for $5 million in 2017. As the U.S. appeals judge David J. Barron wrote, "For want of a comma, we have this case."

In the case known as O'Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, a federal court of appeals was required to interpret a statute under which the "canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution" of certain goods were activities exempted from the general requirement of overtime pay; the question was whether this list included the distribution of the goods, or only the packing of the goods for distribution. The lack of a comma suggested one meaning, while the omission of the conjunction or before "packing" and the fact that the Maine Legislative Drafting Manual advised against use of the serial comma suggested another. It said "Although authorities on punctuation may differ, when drafting Maine law or rules, don’t use a comma between the penultimate and the last item of a series." In addition to the absence of a comma, the fact that the word chosen was "distribution" rather than "distributing" was also a consideration, as was the question of whether it would be reasonable to consider the list to be an asyndetic list (a list in which the coordinating conjunction is absent). Truck drivers demanded overtime pay, and the defense conceded that the expression was ambiguous, but said it should be interpreted as exempting distribution activity from overtime pay. The district court agreed with the defense and held that "distribution" was an exempt activity. On appeal, however, the First Circuit decided that the sentence was ambiguous and "because, under Maine law, ambiguities in the state's wage and hour laws must be construed liberally in order to accomplish their remedial purpose", adopted the drivers' narrower reading of the exemption and ruled that those who distributed the goods were entitled to overtime pay. Oakhurst Dairy settled the case by paying $5 million to the drivers, and the phrase in the law in question was later changed to use serial semicolons and "distributing" – resulting in "canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing".

The opinion in the case said that 43 of the 50 U.S. states had mandated the use of a serial comma and that both chambers of the federal congress had warned against omitting it, in the words of the U.S. House Legislative Counsel's Manual on Drafting Style, "to prevent any misreading that the last item is part of the preceding one"; only seven states "either do not require or expressly prohibited the use of the serial comma".

British 50p Brexit coin

The new United Kingdom 50p coin commemorating Brexit day, 31 January 2020, was minted with the phrase "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations". English novelist Sir Philip Pullman and others criticized the omission of the Oxford comma, whilst others claimed it was an Americanism and not required in this instance.

Semantic network

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_network

A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, which represent concepts, and edges, which represent semantic relations between concepts, mapping or connecting semantic fields. A semantic network may be instantiated as, for example, a graph database or a concept map.

Typical standardized semantic networks are expressed as semantic triples.

Semantic networks are used in natural language processing applications such as semantic parsing and word-sense disambiguation.

History

Examples of the use of semantic networks in logic, directed acyclic graphs as a mnemonic tool, dates back centuries. The earliest documented use being the Greek philosopher Porphyry's commentary on Aristotle's categories in the third century AD.

In computing history, "Semantic Nets" for the propositional calculus were first implemented for computers by Richard H. Richens of the Cambridge Language Research Unit in 1956 as an "interlingua" for machine translation of natural languages. Although the importance of this work and the CLRU was only belatedly realized.

Semantic networks were also independently implemented by Robert F. Simmons  and Sheldon Klein, using the first order predicate calculus as a base, after being inspired by a demonstration of Victor Yngve. The "line of research was originated by the first President of the Association [Association for Computational Linguistics], Victor Yngve, who in 1960 had published descriptions of algorithms for using a phrase structure grammar to generate syntactically well-formed nonsense sentences. Sheldon Klein and I about 1962-1964 were fascinated by the technique and generalized it to a method for controlling the sense of what was generated by respecting the semantic dependencies of words as they occurred in text." Other researchers, most notably M. Ross Quillian and others at System Development Corporation helped contribute to their work in the early 1960s as part of the SYNTHEX project. It's from these publications at SDC that most modern derivatives of the term "semantic network" cite as their background. Later prominent works were done by Allan M. Collins and Quillian (e.g., Collins and Quillian; Collins and Loftus Quillian). Still later in 2006, Hermann Helbig fully described MultiNet.

In the late 1980s, two Netherlands universities, Groningen and Twente, jointly began a project called Knowledge Graphs, which are semantic networks but with the added constraint that edges are restricted to be from a limited set of possible relations, to facilitate algebras on the graph. In the subsequent decades, the distinction between semantic networks and knowledge graphs was blurred. In 2012, Google gave their knowledge graph the name Knowledge Graph.

The Semantic Link Network was systematically studied as a social semantics networking method. Its basic model consists of semantic nodes, semantic links between nodes, and a semantic space that defines the semantics of nodes and links and reasoning rules on semantic links. The systematic theory and model was published in 2004. This research direction can trace to the definition of inheritance rules for efficient model retrieval in 1998 and the Active Document Framework ADF. Since 2003, research has developed toward social semantic networking. This work is a systematic innovation at the age of the World Wide Web and global social networking rather than an application or simple extension of the Semantic Net (Network). Its purpose and scope are different from that of the Semantic Net (or network). The rules for reasoning and evolution and automatic discovery of implicit links play an important role in the Semantic Link Network. Recently it has been developed to support Cyber-Physical-Social Intelligence. It was used for creating a general summarization method. The self-organised Semantic Link Network was integrated with a multi-dimensional category space to form a semantic space to support advanced applications with multi-dimensional abstractions and self-organised semantic links  It has been verified that Semantic Link Network play an important role in understanding and representation through text summarisation applications.  To investigate special social semantics, competition relation and symbiosis relation as well as their roles in evolving society were studied in the emerging topic: Cyber-Physical-Social Intelligence 

More specialized forms of semantic networks has been created for specific use. For example, in 2008, Fawsy Bendeck's PhD thesis formalized the Semantic Similarity Network (SSN) that contains specialized relationships and propagation algorithms to simplify the semantic similarity representation and calculations.

Basics of semantic networks

A semantic network is used when one has knowledge that is best understood as a set of concepts that are related to one another.

Most semantic networks are cognitively based. They also consist of arcs and nodes which can be organized into a taxonomic hierarchy. Semantic networks contributed ideas of spreading activation, inheritance, and nodes as proto-objects.

Examples

In Lisp

The following code shows an example of a semantic network in the Lisp programming language using an association list.

(setq *database*
'((canary  (is-a bird)
           (color yellow)
           (size small))
  (penguin (is-a bird)
           (movement swim))
  (bird    (is-a vertebrate)
           (has-part wings)
           (reproduction egg-laying))))

To extract all the information about the "canary" type, one would use the assoc function with a key of "canary".

WordNet

An example of a semantic network is WordNet, a lexical database of English. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets. Some of the most common semantic relations defined are meronymy (A is a meronym of B if A is part of B), holonymy (B is a holonym of A if B contains A), hyponymy (or troponymy) (A is subordinate of B; A is kind of B), hypernymy (A is superordinate of B), synonymy (A denotes the same as B) and antonymy (A denotes the opposite of B).

WordNet properties have been studied from a network theory perspective and compared to other semantic networks created from Roget's Thesaurus and word association tasks. From this perspective the three of them are a small world structure.

Other examples

It is also possible to represent logical descriptions using semantic networks such as the existential graphs of Charles Sanders Peirce or the related conceptual graphs of John F. Sowa. These have expressive power equal to or exceeding standard first-order predicate logic. Unlike WordNet or other lexical or browsing networks, semantic networks using these representations can be used for reliable automated logical deduction. Some automated reasoners exploit the graph-theoretic features of the networks during processing.

Other examples of semantic networks are Gellish models. Gellish English with its Gellish English dictionary, is a formal language that is defined as a network of relations between concepts and names of concepts. Gellish English is a formal subset of natural English, just as Gellish Dutch is a formal subset of Dutch, whereas multiple languages share the same concepts. Other Gellish networks consist of knowledge models and information models that are expressed in the Gellish language. A Gellish network is a network of (binary) relations between things. Each relation in the network is an expression of a fact that is classified by a relation type. Each relation type itself is a concept that is defined in the Gellish language dictionary. Each related thing is either a concept or an individual thing that is classified by a concept. The definitions of concepts are created in the form of definition models (definition networks) that together form a Gellish Dictionary. A Gellish network can be documented in a Gellish database and is computer interpretable.

SciCrunch is a collaboratively edited knowledge base for scientific resources. It provides unambiguous identifiers (Research Resource IDentifiers or RRIDs) for software, lab tools etc. and it also provides options to create links between RRIDs and from communities.

Another example of semantic networks, based on category theory, is ologs. Here each type is an object, representing a set of things, and each arrow is a morphism, representing a function. Commutative diagrams also are prescribed to constrain the semantics.

In the social sciences people sometimes use the term semantic network to refer to co-occurrence networks. The basic idea is that words that co-occur in a unit of text, e.g. a sentence, are semantically related to one another. Ties based on co-occurrence can then be used to construct semantic networks.

Software tools

There are also elaborate types of semantic networks connected with corresponding sets of software tools used for lexical knowledge engineering, like the Semantic Network Processing System (SNePS) of Stuart C. Shapiro or the MultiNet paradigm of Hermann Helbig, especially suited for the semantic representation of natural language expressions and used in several NLP applications.

Semantic networks are used in specialized information retrieval tasks, such as plagiarism detection. 

They provide information on hierarchical relations in order to employ semantic compression to reduce language diversity and enable the system to match word meanings, independently from sets of words used.

The Knowledge Graph proposed by Google in 2012 is actually an application of semantic network in search engine.

Modeling multi-relational data like semantic networks in low-dimensional spaces through forms of embedding has benefits in expressing entity relationships as well as extracting relations from mediums like text. There are many approaches to learning these embeddings, notably using Bayesian clustering frameworks or energy-based frameworks, and more recently, TransE (NIPS 2013). Applications of embedding knowledge base data include Social network analysis and Relationship extraction.

Molecular machine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_machine

A molecular machine, nanite, or nanomachine, is a molecular component that produces quasi-mechanical movements (output) in response to specific stimuli (input). In biology, macromolecular machines frequently perform tasks essential for life such as DNA replication and ATP synthesis. The expression is often more generally applied to molecules that simply mimic functions that occur at the macroscopic level. The term is also common in nanotechnology where a number of highly complex molecular machines have been proposed that are aimed at the goal of constructing a molecular assembler.

Kinesin walking on a microtubule is a molecular biological machine using protein domain dynamics on nanoscales

For the last several decades, chemists and physicists alike have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to miniaturize machines found in the macroscopic world. Molecular machines research is currently at the forefront with the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry being awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa for the design and synthesis of molecular machines.

Types

Molecular machines can be divided into two broad categories; artificial and biological. In general, artificial molecular machines (AMMs) refer to molecules that are artificially designed and synthesized whereas biological molecular machines can commonly be found in nature and have evolved into their forms after abiogenesis on Earth.

Artificial

A wide variety of artificial molecular machines (AMMs) have been synthesized by chemists which are rather simple and small compared to biological molecular machines. The first AMM, a molecular shuttle, was synthesized by Sir J. Fraser Stoddart. A molecular shuttle is a rotaxane molecule where a ring is mechanically interlocked onto an axle with two bulky stoppers. The ring can move between two binding sites with various stimuli such as light, pH, solvents, and ions. As the authors of this 1991 JACS paper noted: “Insofar as it becomes possible to control the movement of one molecular component with respect to the other in a [2]rotaxane, the technology for building molecular machines will emerge.”, mechanically interlocked molecular architectures spearheaded AMM design and synthesis as they provide directed molecular motion. Today a wide variety of AMMs exists as listed below.

Overcrowded alkane molecular motor.

Molecular motors

Molecular motors are molecules that are capable of rotary motion around a single or double bond.

Single bond rotary motors  are generally fueled by chemical reactions whereas double bond rotary motors  are generally fueled by light. The rotation speed of the motor can also be tuned by careful molecular design. Carbon nanotube nanomotors have also been produced.

Molecular propeller

A molecular propeller is a molecule that can propel fluids when rotated, due to its special shape that is designed in analogy to macroscopic propellers. It has several molecular-scale blades attached at a certain pitch angle around the circumference of a nanoscale shaft. Also see molecular gyroscope.

Daisy chain [2]rotaxane. These molecules are considered as building blocks for artificial muscle.

Molecular switch

A molecular switch is a molecule that can be reversibly shifted between two or more stable states. The molecules may be shifted between the states in response to changes in pH, light, temperature, an electric current, microenvironment, or the presence of a ligand.

Rotaxane based molecular shuttle.

Molecular shuttle

A molecular shuttle is a molecule capable of shuttling molecules or ions from one location to another. A common molecular shuttle consists of a rotaxane where the macrocycle can move between two sites or stations along the dumbbell backbone.

Nanocar

Nanocars are single molecule vehicles that resemble macroscopic automobiles and are important for understanding how to control molecular diffusion on surfaces. The first nanocars were synthesized by James M. Tour in 2005. They had an H shaped chassis and 4 molecular wheels (fullerenes) attached to the four corners. In 2011, Ben Feringa and co-workers synthesized the first motorized nanocar which had molecular motors attached to the chassis as rotating wheels. The authors were able to demonstrate directional motion of the nanocar on a copper surface by providing energy from a scanning tunneling microscope tip. Later, in 2017, the world's first ever Nanocar Race took place in Toulouse.

Molecular balance

A molecular balance is a molecule that can interconvert between two and more conformational or configurational states in response to the dynamic of multiple intra- and intermolecular driving forces, such as hydrogen bonding, solvophobic/hydrophobic effects, π interactions, and steric and dispersion interactions. Molecular balances can be small molecules or macromolecules such as proteins. Cooperatively folded proteins, for example, have been used as molecular balances to measure interaction energies and conformational propensities.

Molecular tweezers

Molecular tweezers are host molecules capable of holding items between their two arms. The open cavity of the molecular tweezers binds items using non-covalent bonding including hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, hydrophobic forces, van der Waals forces, π interactions, or electrostatic effects. 

Examples of molecular tweezers have been reported that are constructed from DNA and are considered DNA machines.

Molecular sensor

A molecular sensor is a molecule that interacts with an analyte to produce a detectable change.

 Molecular sensors combine molecular recognition with some form of reporter, so the presence of the item can be observed.

Molecular logic gate

A molecular logic gate is a molecule that performs a logical operation on one or more logic inputs and produces a single logic output. Unlike a molecular sensor, the molecular logic gate will only output when a particular combination of inputs are present.

Molecular assembler

A molecular assembler is a molecular machine able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with precision.

Molecular hinge

A molecular hinge is a molecule that can be selectively switched from one configuration to another in a reversible fashion. Such configurations must have distinguishable geometries, for instance, Cis or Trans isomers of a V-shape molecule. Azo compounds perform Cis–trans isomerism upon receiving UV-Vis light.

Biological

A ribosome translating a protein

The most complex macromolecular machines are found within cells, often in the form of multi-protein complexes. Some biological machines are motor proteins, such as myosin, which is responsible for muscle contraction, kinesin, which moves cargo inside cells away from the nucleus along microtubules, and dynein, which moves cargo inside cells towards the nucleus and produces the axonemal beating of motile cilia and flagella. "[I]n effect, the [motile cilium] is a nanomachine composed of perhaps over 600 proteins in molecular complexes, many of which also function independently as nanomachines ...  

Flexible linkers allow the mobile protein domains connected by them to recruit their binding partners and induce long-range allostery via protein domain dynamics." Other biological machines are responsible for energy production, for example ATP synthase which harnesses energy from proton gradients across membranes to drive a turbine-like motion used to synthesise ATP, the energy currency of a cell. Still other machines are responsible for gene expression, including DNA polymerases for replicating DNA, RNA polymerases for producing mRNA, the spliceosome for removing introns, and the ribosome for synthesising proteins. These machines and their nanoscale dynamics are far more complex than any molecular machines that have yet been artificially constructed.

Some biological molecular machines

These biological machines might have applications in nanomedicine. For example, they could be used to identify and destroy cancer cells. Molecular nanotechnology is a speculative subfield of nanotechnology regarding the possibility of engineering molecular assemblers, biological machines which could re-order matter at a molecular or atomic scale. Nanomedicine would make use of these nanorobots, introduced into the body, to repair or detect damages and infections. Molecular nanotechnology is highly theoretical, seeking to anticipate what inventions nanotechnology might yield and to propose an agenda for future inquiry. The proposed elements of molecular nanotechnology, such as molecular assemblers and nanorobots are far beyond current capabilities.

Research

The construction of more complex molecular machines is an active area of theoretical and experimental research. A number of molecules, such as molecular propellers, have been designed, although experimental studies of these molecules are inhibited by the lack of methods to construct these molecules. In this context, theoretical modeling can be extremely useful to understand the self-assembly/disassembly processes of rotaxanes, important for the construction of light-powered molecular machines. This molecular-level knowledge may foster the realization of ever more complex, versatile, and effective molecular machines for the areas of nanotechnology, including molecular assemblers.

Although currently not feasible, some potential applications of molecular machines are transport at the molecular level, manipulation of nanostructures and chemical systems, high density solid-state informational processing and molecular prosthetics. Many fundamental challenges need to be overcome before molecular machines can be used practically such as autonomous operation, complexity of machines, stability in the synthesis of the machines and the working conditions.

Biorobotics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorobotics 

 

Biorobotics is an interdisciplinary science that combines the fields of biomedical engineering, cybernetics, and robotics to develop new technologies that integrate biology with mechanical systems to develop more efficient communication, alter genetic information, and create machines that imitate biological systems.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics focuses on the communication and system of living organisms and machines that can be applied and combined with multiple fields of study such as biology, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and much more.

This discipline falls under the branch of biorobotics because of its combined field of study between biological bodies and mechanical systems. Studying these two systems allow for advanced analysis on the functions and processes of each system as well as the interactions between them.

History

Cybernetic theory is a concept that has existed for centuries, dating back to the era of Plato where he applied the term to refer to the “governance of people”. The term ‘cybernetique’ is seen in the mid 1800s used by physicist André-Marie Ampère. The term “cybernetics” was popularized in the late 1940s to refer to a discipline that touched on, but was separate, from established disciplines, such as electrical engineering, mathematics, and biology.

Science

Cybernetics is often misunderstood because of the breadth of disciplines it covers. In the early 20th century, it was coined as an interdisciplinary field of study that combines biology, science, network theory, and engineering. Today, it covers all scientific fields with system related processes. The goal of cybernetics is to analyze systems and processes of any system or systems in an attempt to make them more efficient and effective.

Applications

Cybernetics is used as an umbrella term so applications extend to all systems related scientific fields such as biology, mathematics, computer science, engineering, management, psychology, sociology, art, and more. Cybernetics is used amongst several fields to discover principles of systems, adaptation of organisms, information analysis and much more.

Genetic Engineering

Genetic engineering is a field that uses advances in technology to modify biological organisms. Through different methods, scientists are able to alter the genetic material of microorganisms, plants and animals to provide them with desirable traits. Genetic engineering is included in biorobotics because it uses new technologies to alter biology and change an organism's DNA for their and society's benefit.

History

Although humans have been modifying genetic material of animals and plants through artificial selection for millennia (such as the genetic mutations that developed teosinte into corn and wolves into dogs), genetic engineering refers to the deliberate alteration or insertion of specific genes to an organism's DNA. The first successful case of genetic engineering occurred in 1973 when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen were able to transfer a gene with antibiotic resistance to a bacteria.

Science

There are three main techniques used in genetic engineering: The plasmid method, the vector method and the biolistic method.

Plasmid Method

This technique is used mainly for microorganisms such as bacteria. Through this method, DNA molecules called plasmids are extracted from bacteria and placed in a lab where restriction enzymes break them down. As the enzymes break the molecules down, some develop a rough edge that resembles that of a staircase which is considered ‘sticky’ and capable of reconnecting. These ‘sticky’ molecules are inserted into another bacteria where they will connect to the DNA rings with the altered genetic material.

Vector Method

The vector method is considered a more precise technique than the plasmid method as it involves the transfer of a specific gene instead of a whole sequence. In the vector method, a specific gene from a DNA strand is isolated through restriction enzymes in a laboratory and is inserted into a vector. Once the vector accepts the genetic code, it is inserted into the host cell where the DNA will be transferred.

Biolistic Method

The biolistic method is typically used to alter the genetic material of plants. This method embeds the desired DNA with a metallic particle such as gold or tungsten in a high speed gun. The particle is then bombarded into the plant. Due to the high velocities and the vacuum generated during bombardment, the particle is able to penetrate the cell wall and inserts the new DNA into the cell.

Applications

Genetic engineering has many uses in the fields of medicine, research and agriculture. In the medical field, genetically modified bacteria are used to produce drugs such as insulin, human growth hormones and vaccines. In research, scientists genetically modify organisms to observe physical and behavioral changes to understand the function of specific genes. In agriculture, genetic engineering is extremely important as it is used by farmers to grow crops that are resistant to herbicides and to insects such as BTCorn.

Bionics

Bionics is a medical engineering field and a branch of biorobotics consisting of electrical and mechanical systems that imitate biological systems, such as prosthetics and hearing aids. It's a portmanteau that combines biology and electronics.

History

The history of bionics goes as far back in time as ancient Egypt. A prosthetic toe made out of wood and leather was found on the foot of a mummy. The time period of the mummy corpse was estimated to be from around the fifteenth century B.C. Bionics can also be witnessed in ancient Greece and Rome. Prosthetic legs and arms were made for amputee soldiers. In the early 16th century, a French military surgeon by the name of Ambroise Pare became a pioneer in the field of bionics. He was known for making various types of upper and lower prosthetics. One of his most famous prosthetics, Le Petit Lorrain, was a mechanical hand operated by catches and springs. During the early 19th century, Alessandro Volta further progressed bionics. He set the foundation for the creation of hearing aids with his experiments. He found that electrical stimulation could restore hearing by inserting an electrical implant to the saccular nerve of a patient's ear. In 1945, the National Academy of Sciences created the Artificial Limb Program, which focused on improving prosthetics since there were a large number of World War II amputee soldiers. Since this creation, prosthetic materials, computer design methods, and surgical procedures have improved, creating modern-day bionics.

Science

Prosthetics

The important components that make up modern-day prosthetics are the pylon, the socket, and the suspension system. The pylon is the internal frame of the prosthetic that is made up of metal rods or carbon-fiber composites. The socket is the part of the prosthetic that connects the prosthetic to the person's missing limb. The socket consists of a soft liner that makes the fit comfortable, but also snug enough to stay on the limb. The suspension system is important in keeping the prosthetic on the limb. The suspension system is usually a harness system made up of straps, belts or sleeves that are used to keep the limb attached.

The operation of a prosthetic could be designed in various ways. The prosthetic could be body-powered, externally-powered, or myoelectrically-powered. Body-powered prosthetics consist of cables attached to a strap or harness, which is placed on the person's functional shoulder, allowing the person to manipulate and control the prosthetic as he or she deems fit. Externally-powered prosthetics consist of motors to power the prosthetic and buttons and switches to control the prosthetic. Myoelectrically-powered prosthetics are new, advanced forms of prosthetics where electrodes are placed on the muscles above the limb. The electrodes will detect the muscle contractions and send electrical signals to the prosthetic to move the prosthetic.

Hearing Aids

Four major components make up the hearing aid: the microphone, the amplifier, the receiver, and the battery. The microphone takes in outside sound, turns that sound to electrical signals, and sends those signals to the amplifier. The amplifier increases the sound and sends that sound to the receiver. The receiver changes the electrical signal back into sound and sends the sound into the ear. Hair cells in the ear will sense the vibrations from the sound, convert the vibrations into nerve signals, and send it to the brain so the sounds can become coherent to the person. The battery simply powers the hearing aid.

Applications

Cochlear Implant

Cochlear implants are a type of hearing aid for those who are deaf. Cochlear implants send electrical signals straight to the auditory nerve, the nerve responsible for sound signals, instead of just sending the signals to the ear canal like normal hearing aids.

New Bone-Anchored (Baha) Hearing Aids

These hearing aids are also used for people with severe hearing loss. Baha hearing aids attach to the bones of the middle ear to create the sound vibrations in the skull and send those vibrations to the cochlea.

Artificial Sensing Skin

This artificial sensing skin detects any pressure put on it and is meant for people who have lost any sense of feeling on parts of their bodies, such as diabetics with peripheral neuropathy.

Bionic Eye

The bionic eye is a bioelectronic implant that restores vision for people with blindness.

Orthopedic Bionics

Orthopedic bionics consist of advanced bionic limbs that use a person's neuromuscular system to control the bionic limb.

Endoscopic Robotics

These robotics can remove a polyp during a colonoscopy.