Combined usage of z.B. and usw.

It annoyed me this morning to receive a "corrected" version of a German document I'd been working on, where my boss had basically just added "usw." to the end of example listings in brackets. That was his "feedback". He's a bit of a twat. He also CC'd his boss in the email.

In my opinion the following are correct:
(z.B. Käse, Speck, Brot)
(Käse, Speck, Brot usw.)

But the following is incorrect (or at least poor style) because z.B. and usw. share the same meaning, namely: "these are examples":
(z.B. Käse, Speck, Brot, usw.)

What I need is a nice juicy example, illustration or text (Duden, Langenscheidt etc.) to demonstrate/confirm this. Assuming people agree with me ... ?

yeah, you're right, but he's your boss, innit
it's not like it's a major big deal - I would just let it slide in the knowledge that I have the moral highground
get yourself a little effigy of him and stick pins in it if it really really gets to you

Can't quite agree: usw. means et cetera, z.B. means for example. Nothing wrong with using both. But a jerk can do nothing right, so moan on.

NO, I have to make him look stupid.
I just need to. Otherwise he'll never stop nitpicking.

" z.B. and usw. share the same meaning, namely: "these are examples":
Not quite, zum Beispiel= for example, und so weiter= and so on/ etc,etc.
But your quite right he is only showing he has the last word in everything, Germans can be like that.

I'm searching google for the right Duden entry, on the way I found this on a Swiss site: Lexikas zu diversen Themen. Ahem, Lexika is the plural of Lexikon, bozos!

In fact he's Austrian, and they're the world champions at being right
(it must be true ... an Austrian told me)

They also speak funny

Ask him what he would add as the usw. bit to the examples. Welche weiteren Beispiele würden Sie aufführen. That will get him confused, at least. And remember the Austrians' greatest acheivement in history: they made Beethoven an Austrian, and Hitler a German.

Good advice from sarabyrd

I think jayhay was right.
Sarabyrd is right about the meaning (one is "and so on" and the other "for example"), but I don't agree with her conclusion.

IMHO, the two terms amount to the same thing (as jayhay mentioned), so you wouldn't use them both in the same sentence. When you write "I don't eat meat (e.g. pork, veal, beef)" it's clear that you're citing a few kinds among others and that you're not being exhaustive; you could also write "I don't eat meat (pork, veal, beef, and so on)", the meaning would be the same.

I know the whole discussion took place early in the day (and jayhay had another "war of words" a little later on, it seems).
I'd like to know what your boss said, jayhay. Above all, I hope you still have a job!

I agree that it is overkill to use both, but not incorrect.

I hate to burst your bubble but there's nothing wrong with using both "z.B." and "usw." in that context. The guy may be a twat but he is a native speaker. That being said, I would however agree that the first two suggestions made are also completely acceptable. It's obvious the guy is nitpicking...

I learnt from native speakers that it's not acceptable to use both.
Apparently it's something they learn in school.

But then they also learn in school that German narrowly missed out on being the official language of the USA, which is utter bollocks, so who knows?
Could be right, could be wrong...

Well, I just asked the native speakers on my project and none of them considered it to be wrong. Just as in English "for example" and "etc." don't mean the same thing. In any event, even if it is technically wrong not a whole lot of people seem to know about it so I doubt jayhay would have any luck rubbing the boss's nose in it even if he's just nitpicking.

I lean more towards jayhay's initial opinion but wouldn't go as far as to call the usage of both "incorrect", but "awkward construction" is appropriate. Proper German grammr rules -- as Topsy wrote -- forbid the usage but it may be acceptable in specific cases of everyday usage.

You can do the same thing in English: "Unicode has specific sections reserved for specific languages or language group alphabets, for example, 0400-04FF for Cyrillic, 2C80-2CFF for Coptic, 1700-171F for Tagalog, etc." In this sentence I'm presenting a list of examples and by adding the "etc." clearly stating (rather than implying) that there are further Unicode areas reserved which I didn't enumerate.

Conclusion: Technically incorrect, possibly acceptable, but mainly the guy was being a dick and sarabyrd's third post on this threa... discussion was spot on: call him to the carpet for his pettiness and power games.

woof.

I will not go as far as to say that this statement is absolutely false because I am not 100% sure. However, I have failed to find any evidence that would substantiate this claim (maybe I just didn't look hard enough). It also seems to me to be illogical that using the two in the same sentence would be wrong if not only for the fact that I found many examples of its usage on reputable websites while googling, it makes perfect sense in English and most importantly, I found no evidence to the contrary. As someone who's been speaking German for 9 years, it doesn't sound the least bit wrong or awkward to me. Nevertheless, I concede that I might be wrong but I still would very much like to see a link.

After 35 years of German it grates on my nerves but not on my symantic/grammatic conscience. Guy is Austrian, nuff said. (As in everyone in Austria gets a title, no matter if they have earned it or not. Tons of superfluous words, verbal fluff, linguistic air-pollution)