Thu Aug 30, 2012 11:29 pm
Tom, it's not laziness.
In fact, "etc." is very useful when used correctly.
Example:
There are many players I like using in this game, mostly Red Sox greats such as Yaz, Williams, Stephens, Doerr, Pedro, etc., but I was not sure I was ever going to play again until that letter showed up today.
See, "etc." implies that the list is much longer than the space allows, but that the information is not necessarily vital to the meaning of the sentence. Meanwhile, we finally got some meaningful information from Hal today. And that is vital.
By the way, maybe you should have used "et al" instead of "etc."; it would have been more appropriate.
Bill
P.S. I am an editor. We've talked about our careers (mainly in journalism) before. =)
Wanna play Strat face-to-face in a tournament? Ask me about the 3rd Annual New Hampshire Strat Tourney taking place in April of 2015.