different editors, different grammar issues?

[elfprincess]

Hi,

I'm quite new here and so far have been having an interesting experience.

I submitted a few articles to get me started which were accepted with no problems. I have even sold one, written for a request and again accepted with no real issues, which was a great boost in my first few weeks here.

However, my last few articles which have been written in the same style have been rejected. One has been rejected twice now. One had some typos in it which I hold my hand up to - must have skipped over them in the proofread, but the other issues were for comma usage. I am not a fan of injecting commas all over the place as I find it makes the writing look a bit disjointed. I understand that CC has its rules and I am trying to follow them, but I am confused as to why some articles come back whereas others don't even though they are written in the same style. Is it beacuse some editors pick up on different things or have different views themselves?

I'm trying to learn the comma thing, but am finding myself now putting in many more commas than I think are necessary because I am afraid of missing one out. I see from a quick scan of the forum that commas are something which catch a lot of people out here. I wondered if anyone can tell me if different editors are likely to pick up on different things and have different standards or are they meant to work to a consistent set of rules?

Can anyone with more experience of CC give me an idea of what is the best way to go?

Cheers

[SJHillman]

There's decent consistency on the hard rules, but editors vary on some of the other rules that are sometimes considered optional such as whether to say "this, that, and those" or "this, that and those". My personal preference is the latter as the comma is unneeded due to the conjunction indicating separation of list items. As long as you consistently use the same format most editors will accept it, but there's always That One Guy who prefers a certain way of doing things but won't explicitly state it on the rejection. I've run into That One Guy a few times with articles and there's not much you can do but to do it That One Guy's Way and pray. Just because they're supposed to follow the same standards doesn't mean they always do.