inconsistency in backquote spec?

[gls@Think.COM]

   Date: Tue, 29 Nov 88 14:05 EST
   From: Michael Greenwald <Greenwald@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com>

       Date: Tue, 29 Nov 88 12:35:36 EST
       From: gls@Think.COM
       ...
       You raise some good points here.  At first I was certain that the book
       was not consistent, but now I have the following language lawyer's
       argument:

       The spec for APPEND says that all arguments but the last must be lists.
       The comment about the last argument makes it clear that the others
       are meant to be proper lists; see also the middle paragraph of page 27.
       Therefore dotted lists are not allowed as values for D.

   I thought a (recent?) CL Cleanup specified that if arguments (all but
   the last) to APPEND (or NCONC) were dotted lists, the non-nil final CDR
   was to be ignored.  In which case, the examples on 351 are incorrect.

Because you sent the mail out to common-lisp@sail and not to
any of the X3J13 mailing lists, I assumed that you were asking
a question about the language as defined solely by the book.
In other words, I assume that the audience for the common-lisp
mailing list has not necessarily followed all of the X3J13 work.
It is true that eventual adoption of this cleanup item would
invalidate the examples.

--Guy