t enjoyment of
man."--_Ib._, p, 100.

[462] When several nominatives are connected, some authors and printers put
the comma only where the conjunction is omitted. W. Day separates them all,
one from an other; but after the last, when this is singular before a
plural verb, he inserts no point. Example: "Imagination is one of the
principal ingredients which enter into the complex idea of genius; but
_judgment, memory, understanding, enthusiasm_, and _sensibility_ are also
included."--_Day's Punctuation_, p. 52. If the points are to be put where
the pauses naturally occur, here should be a comma after _sensibility_;
and, if I mistake not, it would be more consonant with current usage to set
one there. John Wilson, however, in a later work, which is for the most
part a very good one, prefers the doctrine of Day, as in the following
instance: "_Reputation, virtue_, and _happiness_ depend greatly on the
choice of companions."--_Wilson's Treatise on Punctuation_, p. 30.

[463] Some printers, and likewise some authors, suppose a series of words
to require the comma, only where the conjunction is suppressed. This is
certainly a great error. It gives us such punctuation as comports neither
with the _sense_ of three or more words in the same construction, nor with
the _pauses_ which they require in reading. "John, James and Thomas are
here," is a sentence which plainly tells John that James and Thomas are
here; and which, if read according to this pointing, cannot possibly have
any other meaning. Yet this is the way in which the rules of _Cooper,
Felton, Frost, Webster_, and perhaps others, teach us to point it, when we
mean to tell somebody else that all three are here! In his pretended
"Abridgment of Murray's English Grammar," (a work abounding in small thefts
from Brown's Institutes,) Cooper has the following example: "John, James or
Joseph intends to accompany me."--Page 120. Here, John being addressed, the
punctuation is right; but, to make this noun a nominative to the verb, a
comma must be put after _each of the others_. In Cooper's "Plain and
Practical Grammar," the passage is found in this form: "John, James, or
Joseph intends to accompany us."--Page 132. This pointing is doubly wrong;
because it is adapted to neither sense. If the three nouns have the same
construction, the principal pause will be immediately before the verb; and
surely a comma is as much required by that pause, as by the second. See the
Note on Rule 3d,