[General] Use and Omission of comma after Nevertheless

[DANAU]

Hi.

I extracted the sentences below from the preface of the book "The Singapore Story" by Lee Kuan Yew.

"I was not drafting a will or a conveyance to be scrutinised by a judge. Nevertheless she demanded precise, clear and unambiguous language."

My understanding is that a comma will normally be used after the word "Nevertheless".
I hope to understand the rationale to omit the comma in this case.

 

[Rover_KE]

I would always put a comma after nevertheless when it's the first word of a sentence.

There should be one in your example, in my opinion.

 

[DANAU]

Thanks, Rover_KE.

I would think so too, except this book was written by our former prime minister who "had made a First and won the only star for Distinction on the final Law Tripos II honours list" when he was in Cambridge in 1949. Also, his wife, who was smarter than him, went over every word he wrote many times. The book was also vetted by our English newspaper chief editor and a few editorial writers and journalists. I bought this book ten years ago, which I had not read much, but I am picking it up now as I feel that this is one of the book which is likely to have almost zero grammatical or punctuation error given the rigorous check it had passed through. That is why I was thinking there could be some exceptional rule which I might not be aware for the comma to be omitted in this case.

 

[tedmc]

Almost all sentences in fraze.it have a comma after nevertheless used at the beginning.

 

[GoesStation]

I would always put a comma after nevertheless when it's the first word of a sentence.

There should be one in your example, in my opinion.

I agree. Nevertheless the missing comma doesn't shock me.

 

[tedmc]

Writing is an art after all, which allows leeway for certain omissions, especially with the comma. The second comma in my preceding sentence here is a case in point.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I like a comma there.

There's not universal agreement, though. For instance, some style guides say that if the instroductory clause is short, it's not needed.

The important thing is to be consistent.