I just want to say how marvelous I think it is that you discuss these things in your journal, which has the effect of raising awareness about how language is used and abused.

I use different style-guides depending on to whom I'm sending queries: Chicago, NYTimes or -- very rarely -- Webster for American markets, Canadian Gage or Canadian Oxford for the publishers in my country, Oxford for British Commonwealth or English publications abroad. Different editors and copy editors have their own preferences, so if I don't know, I usually email or phone to find out.

One thing I was discussing with an editor on my f-list was about how grammar, punctuation and spelling are habitual and memorized, and the habit-forming aspects get confused or, perhaps, re-oriented because of the internet. With so many different practices, all perfectly correct in the country of origin for the writer, the imprints tend to change. Then there are just flat-out mistakes but, because the memory is imprinted by common usage, they become absorbed into normalcy. The multi-stop sentence ending is a good example.