Blog - Proofreading and Copy Editing

e.g., etc.

We often see a combination of e.g. and etc. in texts, as in the following example:

A compound sentence is one or more simple sentences joined by a connective, e.g. and, but, then, etc.

This is technically incorrect…

‘e.g.’ comes from the Latin exempli gratia and of course means ‘for example’. So in the sentence above, we are saying: ‘A compound sentence is one or more simple sentences joined by a connective (examples of which are and, but, then, and other things).

In fact, when we say ‘for example’, the words that follow should be examples only. If ‘etc.’ is added we are saying apart from the list of examples there are others too. This is stating the obvious and the ‘etc.’ is superfluous. So, we should say:

A compound sentence is one or more simple sentences joined by a connective, e.g. and, but, then.

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