Re: comma or semicolon

Subject: Re: comma or semicolon
From: Mark Levinson <mark -at- SD -dot- CO -dot- IL>
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 1995 13:29:10 IDT

Atlas Inc. consist of a scientific team; combining thier experience
and education to provide you with the highest quality products.

** A highly lousy sentence.

First of all, "consist" should be "consists,"
unless your environment is strongly British influenced.

Next, who's doing the combining? The company or the team?
To eliminate ambiguity, you'd be better off starting a new
sentence with a pronoun.

Atlas Inc. consists of a scientific team. They combine
their expertise...

or

Atlas Inc. consists of a scientific team. Atlas combines
their expertise...

However, the clearer the writing becomes, the more obvious is the
pompous attempt to make a marketing claim out of almost nothing but
the word "scientific". What company cannot say it's a team combining
their experience and education to provide the highest quality products?
Tell me that 20% of them have PhDs, or that together they hold
50 patents, and I'll begin to believe you.

__________________________________________________________________________
||- Mark L. Levinson, mark -at- sd -dot- co -dot- il -- Box 5780, 46157 Herzlia, Israel -||
|| - Death to fanatics! - ||


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