RE: "and then," or simply "then"?

["Sarah Blake" <Sarah -dot- Blake -at- microfocus -dot- com>]

> While some may say a comma splice and the use of "then" as a
conjunction
> improves readability, I'd need to see hard data to be convinced.

Well, as a complete grammatical ignoramus (I blame the state of teaching
in Scotland circa the 1980s), I find the comma-splice-and-'then' more
readable.

I wouldn't dream of writing 'press CTRL then click the mouse'.  Nor
would I dream of writing 'press CTRL, and click the mouse'.*  But 'press
CTRL, then click the mouse' seems perfectly reasonable to me.  'And
then' seems so clumsy by comparison; the 'and' is unnecessary, implicit
in the 'then', and I stumble slightly in reading as the redundancy
grates.

I guess I'm not exactly using 'then' as a conjunction, but I'm not
exactly using it as an adverb either**; it's in a category of its own
somewhere between the two!

And why not? :)

Sarah Blake
Senior Technical Author
Micro Focus

* Well actually I would, but at some point in the dim and distant past I
was taught to avoid commas with conjunctions, and I still feel guilty
when I break the 'rule'.  Which I do a lot.

** I use other adverbs correctly; 'press CTRL, afterwards click the
mouse', for example, makes me twitch.  It's only 'then' that gets the
special treatment.

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