”including red, black and white – 就只包含三种颜色“

我自己觉得在这里“including”指的是除了这三种颜色以外还包含其他的颜色。不过，有些英语专家不这么觉得。他们觉得including也可以表示就只包含三种颜色。不过，因为这个矛盾问题存在，所以为了避免这种“含糊”，可以换一个词 － ”consisting”。

比如说：consisting of red, black and white – 就只包含三种颜色

(3) 列举后煞尾 [etc.]

如：与樊哙夏候婴靳强纪信等四人持剑盾步走《史记·项羽本纪》
又如:长江、黄河、黑龙江、珠江等四大河流
….. see http://www.zdic.net/zd/

So, I believe a Chinese author may use a sentence like: “包括a、b、c、d等”， and if a translator is unfamiliar with the above usage I quoted, he/she may directly translate it into “including a, b, c, d, etc.”

Chery :Mu husband is an editor, and he hates it so much when Chinese authors use “etc”, especially in a lot of cases where the list is already complete and they just have to add an “etc” as if there is more. More what? Even the authors have no clue.

totally understood and I felt the same way when I was little younger reading so many 等等 in Chinese. there seems no rules for when to use 等等。people just don’t care if there’s more things in the list. sometimes, i guess it’s because the author is not very sure if the list is complete.

but when it comes to english, i guess it needs more logic and confidence to remove the “etc.”

豆瓣里的讨论很强烈，一定可以学习。

http://www.douban.com/group/topic/9060198/

自己也有小组：http://www.douban.com/group/angryeditor/

那etc.在什么情况下使用才正确? 请Angry Editor帮忙举几个例子…thx^^

e.g.
including red, black and white – 就只包含三种颜色
including red, black and white etc. – 除了这三种颜色意外还包含其他的颜色

不知道这种理解对不对。希望Angry Editor能解答一下