This is somewhat off-topic and irrelevant, but the interesting thing about Derrida's use of language is that, though he is "careful", he is deliberately imprecise, because he wants to convey the idea that no word can precisely be fixed to a specific definition. In this sense, those two words you refer to (by the way, which book are they from?) may actually mean the same thing, just as he invented so many different words for "differance".

Hi Earl,

I'm not sure if I get what you are saying. By "conjunctive phrase", I suppose you mean the same thing Nathan is referring to. In other words, wind and drizzle are independent phrases, rather than a set or pair. So, with the example of apple and orange which is correct? Or are both correct?

From what you guys are saying, if I wrote:
There was an apple and an orange.
I'm implying:
There was an apple, and there was an orange.

But if I mean to see them as a pair, wouldn't it be correct to say:
There were an apple and an orange.

In that sense, I would imagine that "cold wind" and "intermittent drizzle" were happening concurrently.

Also, what if I reversed the sentence:
A cold wind and an intermittent drizzle were there.
In this case, you certain would not use "was", would you?

Thanks Wynne. I fixed the quotation marks. I'm aware of the rules of quotation marks, but I keep forgetting. I just think it looks so much better when commas and periods are outside of quotes, especially when you list them in sequence.

Hi Ian L,

I'm confused.

Since I am NOT focused on when McD is good, are you suggesting that I write: "I argued that McDonald's was good for you."

But then, I do mean to say that it is universally true, in which case you say the tenses do not have to match.

If I am not focused on WHEN, that makes it more universal (not specific to any point in time). For instance:

I argued that stealing is bad.

Here naturally I mean to say it is bad universally, not now, not then, but always. Thus it is a universal statement, and (therefore) it does not focus on WHEN.

Here is my take:

"Few" means small number.
As in: "there were very few people in the theater."
"A few" means 2 or 3.
As in: "there were only a few people in the theater."

My take on it is:
You are a 38 year old man.
And.
You are 38 years old.
When "year old" is a modifier to "man", it's singular.

I actually feel that Strunk's suggestion is superior, especially in the cases like:

"You can buy 3 different kinds of film for your camera: slide, black and white, and negative."

If you always omitted the comma before "and", then you end up with:
"slide, black and white and negative" which is confusing.

Now, this is interesting. Everyone I spoke to in the past about this told me not to put comma before "and". But according to Strunk's Elements of Style, "In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last." See the examples on this page:
http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html

"These computers EACH come with a 40GB drive"
When you put "each", you don't need to make the verb singular? i.e. "comes".

The example was misleading. Kinsella is a last name of a person. AS&E is the name of the company. So the question really is:
Which is correct:
"AS&E chief technology officer Joseph Callerame usher me into ..."
Or
"The AS&E chief technology officer Joseph Callerame usher me into ..."