“My wife and I take short jaunts to places like Portland, Newport, Montreal and Hyde Park.”
That’s what I sent the Insider in response to a request for some information about what I’ve been up to (note the two prepositions at the end of the sentence). What appeared in print was “My wife and I take short jaunts to places like Portland, Maine, Newport, Rhode Island, Montreal, and Hyde Park in London.”
I did recently stroll through Hyde Park in London, but the transatlantic flight required to get there hardly qualifies as a “short jaunt.”
The dear people at the Insider apparently added the names of the states to forestall the assumption that we went to Newport and Portland, Ark., although those are neither “short jaunts” nor tourist destinations. (Arkansas, by the way, has just about everything: Newark, Lincoln, Nashville, Huntsville, Augusta, Decatur, Camden, Hartford, and Jacksonville, not to mention Gassville, the fabled El Dorado, and its own Monticello.)
Getting back to Hyde Park, the one in New York State can be reached by car in a few hours, and then you can spend a couple of days visiting sites associated with the Roosevelts, dropping in at the smallest of the Vanderbilts’ many mansions, and eating at the Culinary Institute of America. And on the way back you can stop at Martin Van Buren’s place and see the cane that was given to him by Andrew Jackson. That’s a wonderful “short jaunt” for people who like both history and food.
Putting on my Grammarnator hat, I note that semi-colons are to be used when items in a list contain internal commas. Therefore, the Insider should have written “places like Portland, Maine; Newport, Rhode Island; Hyde Park, New York; and Montreal.”
But thanks a bunch for the awesome coverage. This issue’s a keeper at my house.
