My inner grammar Nazi makes an appearance

Commas, semicolons, colons, lists and “and”, and how they work together to handle nested lists.

Poor usage:

“Metro’s operating expenses are paid through three sources: passenger fares, revenue raised by the agency through advertising and other sources and taxpayers in the District, Maryland and Virginia.” — “Metro Considers Increasing Rail Fares” by Lena H. Sun, Washington Post Dec. 11, 2006, Page A11 (from A1).

What’s happening here? There’s a list, the colon tells us that, but then there is but one, wait, no, two commas and three “and”s to help us sort it out. No semicolons. Lots of words that go together in confusing ways.

The most likely answer is that there are nested lists and we need some way to sort them out, and this is where semicolons working with colons, commas and “and”s shine.

Try this:

“Metro’s operating expenses are paid through three sources: passenger fares; revenue raised by the agency through advertising and other sources; and taxpayers in the District, Maryland and Virginia.”

Not only is this now clear, but it opens the sentence up to paring unnecessary words.

Thus:

“Metro’s operating expenses are paid from: fares; advertising and other revenue; and taxes from the District, Maryland and Virginia.”

No need to say “three sources, because our semicolons make that perfectly visible, and this leads us away from other cruft like “passenger fares” and “revenue raised by the agency.”

My inner grammar Nazi usually stays in the background, but occasionally there's something that requires action.