Hi, Ardith Hinton!
I read your message from 08.07.2019 16:30

 AK>> [...] according to punctuation rules, the gaping comma should be
 AK>> used:

 AK>> "Reading maketh a full man; conference, a ready man; and writing,
 AK>> an exact man."

 AH> Hmm... nice theory, except that the sentence continues after
"exact man" and Bacon uses a number of commas there
(https://www.enotes.com).

I haven't found there anything on this account.

 AH> I understand where you're coming from because I encountered similar
 AH> problems in my adventures with Latin & French. The textbook
 AH> explains what we should do... and the concept seems logical until
 AH> we get to question #4, which introduces an added wrinkle the
 AH> authors didn't tell us about. :-))

Yeah, ;) my comment was based on the textbook "Punctuation simplified
and applied" by Gerald Woods.

http://pics.propush.ru/img/omitwordscomma__jw5ae.jpg


 AK>> So, your sentence should be like this:

 AK>> "Kipling's cat is male whereas its Russian counterpart,
female."


 AH>      In a short sentence like this I'd say:


 AH>       Kipling's cat is male; its Russian counterpart, female.

 AH>                            or

 AH>       Kipling's cat is male, whereas its Russian counterpart is female.

I like the last sentence the most. Indeed, the economy of ink is too small
when we shorten it by just two letters. ;-)

 AK>> BTW, what did he mean speaking "conference maketh a ready man"?

 AH> When all of us share our ideas in E_T the whole is greater than the
 AH> sum of its parts. I learn as much from others as they do from me &
 AH> I realize.. before you need to ask... why I may suggest you add a
 AH> comma here or there even though it appears on the surface that I'm
 AH> not taking my own advice. :-)

It's interesting - if you had used "want" instead
"suggest" would you add "to" before "add"?

"I may want you TO add comma here".

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2019

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