Mr. Teall quotes the above sentence, among others from books on punctuation, and says that the commas setting off “designed solely for printers” should be omitted.
The sentence is from a late edition of Mr. Wilson’s work; and it shows that author’s discriminating use of marks. The omission of the commas would entirely change the meaning of the language. The meaning of the language may be more clearly expressed as follows:
16-1. In 1826, the first edition of this work was published, and was designed solely for printers.
With the commas omitted the meaning of the sentence would be as follows:
16-2. In 1826, the first edition of this work designed solely for printers, was published.
Sentences 16 and 16-1 say that the first edition of the work was published in 1826. Sentence 16, with the commas omitted, as Mr. Teall says they should be, and Sentence 16-2 say the first printers’ edition was published in 1826; and they imply that other editions not designed solely for printers were previously published. As no such edition was published, Mr. Teall is in error, and Mr. Wilson’s punctuation (No. 16) is correct.
Many writers set off such explanatory or slightly parenthetical modifiers by parentheses, as illustrated in Sentence 12-2; other writers use dashes for this purpose. As we shall show later, neither mark finds sanction in punctuation by reason.
17. In medicine the anesthetic of choice is chloroform or ether; in dentistry it is laughing-gas, or nitrous oxide.
The conjunction “or” appears twice in the above sentence. In the first clause it stands between two words, one of which is excluded when the other is selected, just as if written “either chloroform or ether.” In the second clause a new relation between the words is set up. Here the apparent meaning is not the real meaning.