Should there be a comma following 20 in this sentence?:
Beginning Monday, Oct. 20, Californians will have the opportunity to vote early in the November 4 General Election.
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2Yes. Just replace the date with tomorrow: Beginning tomorrow, Californians[...]. The fact that it's a date instead of another way of specifying a moment in time is not really relevant.– oerkelensOct 14, 2014 at 12:45
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1Don’t abbreviate the names of the months; it annoys them. Otherwise you’ll make Oct. get all jealous of November.– tchrist ♦Oct 14, 2014 at 12:54
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1 Answer
Yes.
Use the basic date format- Monday, October 20,2014,....... Monday, October 20,...........
The (AmE) full month-day-year date always requires commas before and after the year
Monday, October 20,2014,.......
Unless the date appears at the end of a sentence:
e.g., “She will attend the meeting on October 15, 2012.”.
This is always the case regardless of how the date is being used.
Incorrect: “I need a copy of your presentation of April 17, 2012 on the new company policies.”
Correct: “I need a copy of your presentation of April 17, 2012, on the new company policies.”
answered Oct 14, 2014 at 14:09
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1'The full month-day-year date always requires commas before and after the year'. No it doesn't. Grammarist states: << In the British-style day-month-year format, no commas are used — for example: Between Monday 31 January and Sunday 6 February 2011 star gazers will be asked to count the number of stars they can see within the constellation of Orion. [The Guardian] >> This is a matter of style choice rather than 'rules', so 'Yes, a comma is a MUST.' is like telling people which cola they MUST buy. Oct 14, 2014 at 14:27
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@Edwin Ashworth,I acknowledge that it's more to do with style choice than set rules, I presented my point keeping AmE in mind. Oct 14, 2014 at 14:36
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In the UK, there's no law dictating that we must use usages normally encountered over here rather than the varieties normally encountered in say the US. Obviously, it could be confusing if someone insisted on bucking local trends with confusable choices of expressions, but when it comes to choice of embellishing date formats or spelling, 'You must' perpetuates all that is bad in prescriptive English. Oct 14, 2014 at 14:48