Punctuation for a list of people including their credentials

February 16, 2012 10:02 AM

[PunctuationFilter] When you are writing a list of people with their credentials, do you separate the person with their credentials from the next person with their credentials with commas?

So for example:


Speakers include: John Smith, MD, FACP, Jane Smith, PhD, Fred Doe, MD, CM and your mother.

Or would I use semi colons? I've tried googling, but I can only find information about how to punctuate the actual credentials, not lists that include the credentials. This is for a flyer, so I'm not worried about a particular style guide, just general usage (although obviously this is in healthcare so general rules of thumb for that would be ok).

posted by Kimberly to Grab Bag (13 answers total)

Semi colons.
posted by Dolley at 10:05 AM on February 16, 2012

Best answer: Separate them with semi colons, and use a terminal semi colon at the end of the list (i.e., Oxford comma).
posted by Admiral Haddock at 10:05 AM on February 16, 2012

Best answer: I've seen it done with semicolons.

Ex:

Speakers include: John Smith, MD, FACP; Jane Smith, PhD; Fred Doe, MD, CM; and your mother.

(IMO, the "oxford semicolon" is needed here because Fred Doe could be listed as having "your mother" as an epithet...but since I assume that's not the case, I use the semicolon.)
posted by cmchap at 10:05 AM on February 16, 2012

Best answer: Example.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 10:06 AM on February 16, 2012

John Smith, MD, FACP; Jane Smith, PhD; Fred Doe, MD, CM; and your mother is correct. This is in fact more or less what the semicolon was created for.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:07 AM on February 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Semicolons separate items with internal punctuation. It's AMA style, relevant since you're doing this for healthcare.
posted by photovox at 10:12 AM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In the UK post-nominal letters are usually not separated by commas, so you can use commas to separate the whole name: John Smith MD FACP, Jane Smith PhD, Fred Doe MD CM, and your mother.

You can see varying styles in the U.S. For example, JAMA uses semicolons, but the New England Journal of Medicine just uses commas with more commas.
posted by grouse at 10:13 AM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is a bit of a tangent, but a counterexample to the "semicolon to split comma phrases" is the APA citation style:

Kernis, M. H., Cornell, D. P., Sun, C. R., Berry, A., Harlow, T., & Bach, J. S. (1993). There's more to self-esteem than whether it is high or low: The importance of stability of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1190-1204.

(source)

That's the most common place I personally see/use commas-within-list-items, so I would probably just stick with commas, or only use semicolons if there was a danger of easy misinterpretation.
posted by supercres at 10:15 AM on February 16, 2012

PubMed does initials the same way folks in the UK do post-nominal letters, according to grouse.
posted by supercres at 10:18 AM on February 16, 2012

cmchap has it. The semicolon is your friend.
posted by Decani at 10:22 AM on February 16, 2012

Response by poster: I think I'm going to go with semicolons since it makes more semantic sense to me and looks better aesthetically speaking, but I'm glad it's not so cut and dried that I feel like an idiot for asking. I especially appreciate the advice about the Oxford comma.

Thanks for your help!!
posted by Kimberly at 10:23 AM on February 16, 2012

Editor here. I was about to huff 'Semicolons ONLY. No debate.'

Instead I learned something new, and when I look closely at the NEJM style (and apparently the entire UK's), I can at least see the argument for commas instead.

So I'd offer 2 answers: 1) Use your publication's style; or 2) If there's no style to go by, use semicolons for the reasons offered above.

BTW, here's another example of the dangers posed by shunning the serial (aka Oxford) comma: "I'd like to thank my parents, the Pope and Lady Gaga.'

You can't go wrong with it, but you can go badly wrong w/o it.

'
posted by LonnieK at 4:01 PM on February 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

And never feel like an idiot for asking. The idiots are those who charge ahead without a moment's thought.

Writing is easy, but good writing is hard. I see so many articles etc where I can pinpoint the place where the writer just gave up.
posted by LonnieK at 4:06 PM on February 16, 2012 [2 favorites]