Dear Mr. Nguyen:
Thank you for your timely response to my request.
You are correct.  It was my mistake to have included the extra erroneous parenthesis.
Please revise my request to allow(rose . violet . buttercup) to be interpreted as(rose . (violet . buttercup)) which, as you have explained, is the same as(rose violet . buttercup)
I understand this alternative to be a cons whose CAR is rose and whose CDR points to a cons whose CAR is violet and whose CDR is buttercup.  You have explained that this is equivalent to a two member list whose first member is rose and whose second member is a cons whose CAR is violet and whose CDR is buttercup.
My expanded request is that all functions expecting a list for an argument should treat these alternative lists just as they would treat a nil-terminated list.
      From: Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnu.org>
 To: Howard McCay <howardmccay@yahoo.com> 
Cc: 24621@debbugs.gnu.org
 Sent: Wednesday, October 5, 2016 4:08 AM
 Subject: Re: bug#24621: 24.5.1 (i686-pc-mingw32) of 2015-04-11 on LEG570; elisp manual; third attempt; please forgive and disregard first and second.
   

() Howard McCay <howardmccay@yahoo.com>
() Wed, 5 Oct 2016 07:15:05 +0000 (UTC)

  (rose . (violet . buttercup))
  =
  (rose (violet . buttercup))

For Lisp (and Scheme), this relation does not hold.  To see for
yourself, in the *scratch* buffer, add:

 '(rose . (violet . buttercup))

and type ‘C-j’ (NB: single-quote at the beginning of the form).
You should see:

 (rose violet . buttercup)

Any change you propose to ‘read’ that assumes (or prescribes)
otherwise will be DOA.

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen -----------------------------------------------
 (defun responsep (type via)
  (case type
    (technical (eq 'mailing-list via))
    ...))                              748E A0E8 1CB8 A748 9BFA
--------------------------------------- 6CE4 6703 2224 4C80 7502