On the use of "by" and on the use of commas

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Anonymous

#511117 Thu, 08 May 08 09:24 AM

Dear All,

while reading the proof of a manuscript, I noticed that the journal proofreader made a few changes I do not really understand. Therefore I would be grateful if you could enlighten me on the following:

1) By using the hypotheses of this theorem, we will prove that...

Is "by" really necessary? Is it incorrect "Using the hypotheses of ..."?

2) We will prove the main theorem by means of the *** construction i.e., we will start from ....

I always put the comma before i.e. - hence immediately after construction in the above example - or before words such as "namely". Conversely the proofreader always moved the comma after i.e. or after namely. Is is really correct?

I thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts and opinions with me

Anonymous

Commas, Constructions

Mister Micawber

#511136 Thu, 08 May 08 10:46 AM

.
1-- No, I don't see that by is necessary.
2-- Style guides can vary somewhat, but according to mine, namely, that is, for example, i.e. and e.g. are all followed by a comma and preceded by some kind of punctuation (comma, semicolon, parenthesis, etc.) depending on the sentence structure.