Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

SchreiberBike said:

terminal serial comma

I love it.

DebbieSLP said:

a spending cap was applied to physical therapy, and a second cap was applied to occupational and speech-language therapy combined.

I'm not sure how I didn't recognize this error, but it's physical therapy and speech-language pathology that share a cap. Occupational therapists are the lucky ones that have their own separate cap. This situation began with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and continues to today. The law has been amended many times since then, at least yearly, and this error has never been changed. Another update is due in December, 2009. Sorry for the error!

I did a brief search for references that discuss the reason the money is distributed as it is -- the omission of a terminal serial comma (great term!). All I found was plenty of articles talking about the fact that the law requires PT and SLP to share one cap while OT gets the other. I did see one reference that stated that a previous law only authorized PT and SLP services for Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries, and that OT was added later. That still doesn't describe why all three terms were not separated by commas in the updated law. In the previous law, "physical therapy" and "speech language pathology" were conjoined with "and," and each discipline had its own spending cap. We (PT and SLP) only had to start sharing one when OT was added.

I know that this must have been written about somewhere. It's certainly discussed in hospitals and clinics. I'll continue to look!

Serial Commas, In Defense of

From Michael Quinion's World Wide Words – 06 Mar 10:

The Associated Press reported on Friday about claims in a new book
that Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il spent millions on "everything from
luxury cars, carpets and exotic foods, to monitors that can detect
heartbeats of people hiding behind walls and gold-plated handguns."
Peter Weinrich wondered if North Koreans were really that small.

After all, there's already an extra comma after "foods," so there's no net gain (or loss) except in clarity.

Peter