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sp332

I'm positive the second comma shouldn't be there. (I wouldn't normally comment on commas, but it seems on-topic...)

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Yep. They managed to refute their own title in four words, I am impressed.

Exactly what I thought.

I would have written "Writing clear and concise sentences"

They were attempting most likely to follow Strunk & White's idiotic dictum to omit all needless words. More often than not, when people trust Strunk & White to do their thinking for them, bad language occurs.

That is a moronic dictum. I've always followed Fowler's Modern.

Muphry's Law in action.

Unless the intent was:

  Writing clear sentences.

and then 'concise' was added. As if to mean:

  Writing clear (concise) sentences.

Well, if that's the case, I don't want their advice in writing clear sentences.

The "concise" in "Writing clear, concise, sentences" is a non-restrictive adjective, tacked on as secondary information, and spoken between two pauses, with a different pitch to the other 3 words. The sentence could mean the speaker or author thinks sentences must be concise to be clear.

The "concise", like the "clear", in "Writing clear concise sentences" is a restrictive adjective, primary to the meaning of the sentence, with all words spoken at the same pitch. Clarity and conciseness are orthogonal. Perhaps there's a slight pause between clear and concise, which could be shown with a single comma.

It depends on what you mean by "shouldn't". The Oxford comma is optional and considered syntactically correct if used. If you mean that it is more concise to leave it out, then thats another issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

EDIT: Ignore this. I thought he was referring to the first line of the post. "Follow the principles below to write sentences that are clear, to the point, and easier to read."

This is not a case of Serial commas. The title "Writing Clear, Concise, Sentences" has two adjectives and one noun. It's not a list of three.

We're being needlessly cheeky here. It isn't on every page and it isn't on the pdf. I propose it's an accident which happend when the document was moved from Word to the web. Notice the comma makes sense in How to Write Clear, Concise, and Direct Sentences. They just removed and Direct to shorten the title and someone, not necessarily the authors, mistakenly left the comma.

It's not on every page. It is ok in the title of this one http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CCS_wordyphrases.html for example

clear and concise does not imply perfect grammar :).

I assumed it was purposeful: an attempt at irony. Thus, I expected a funny article to be linked.

The article headline has been fixed but the page title hasn't.

Kind of makes me to not want to read the article

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