On Sun, 2003-05-18 at 14:43, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
I don't like the comma rule, because it can be easily (and inadvertantly) worked around. For example, what if someone wrote "in Massachusetts, USA." for the Boston article. Then the rule and subsequently software would consider it a full article.
No arbitrary automatic rule is perfect. If the rule was three periods, someone could write "in Massachusetts..." etc. They're all dumb rules, essentially equivalent.