Dear Matthew,
First, please let me thank you for your support and recommendations.
On 27 November 2012 13:54, Matthew Karlsen matthew@karlsen.me.uk wrote:
"Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data."
should probably be
"Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist but, like it, their internal working is a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data."
That depends on whom you ask. If you take a look at http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conjunctions.htm, then you can see that a comma before a little conjunction connecting two independent clauses is never considered incorrect. Furthermore, somewhere on the same site there is a recommendation that if a parenthetical clause immediately follows a little conjunction, then the first comma should be omitted. However, I have seen all of (a comma + a little conjunction + a comma + a parenthetical clause + a comma), (a little conjunction + a comma + a parenthetical clause + a comma), and (a comma + a little conjunction + a parenthetical clause + a comma) being used by various writers, so I do not mind any of those much.
We try to use British English on FSFE websites (oh the irony of me pointing you to a .edu site!), and if you think the usage you described would make the sentence easier to understand, then we would happily alter that. I would simply like to ask you to contemplate on the previous paragraph before you proclaim your decision.
Sincerely yours,