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They Travel in Pairs . . . Sometimes

January 25, 2013 in Say What? with 5 Comments

I’m hoping to make commas less intimidating for you through these posts this month. But often there are very subtle differences in the choice of whether or not to use a comma. Whenever a comma is used to set off an element (such as “1928” or “Minnesota” in the first two examples below), a second comma is required if the phrase or sentence continues (completing the thought) beyond the element being set off. This principle applies to many of the uses for commas.

June 5, 1928, lives on in the memories of only a handful of us.
Sledding in Duluth, Minnesota, is facilitated by that city’s hills and frigid winters.

I often see sentences that set off a phrase in the middle but only use one comma. It’s best to check and see if you really need a pair. If you are inserting a phrase that can be removed and leaves a complete sentence with an unchanged meaning, you do need a pair of commas. These are called “parenthetical elements” that serve as an explanation or comment.

Wrong:

When I went to the store, at the request of my mother I bought a gallon of milk.
Sometimes, when the sun is out I go for an early run.
He ate a huge, almost gigantic sandwich.

Correct:

When I went to the store, at the request of my mother, I bought a gallon of milk.
Sometimes, when the sun is out, I go for an early run.
He ate a huge, almost gigantic, sandwich.

If you take out the middle phrase, for example, in this sentence, it still says the same thing: “When I went to the store, I bought a gallon of milk.” You bought a gallon of milk whether or not the person you are talking to knows your mom sent you. You can also write this: “When I went to the store at the request of my mother, I bought a gallon of milk.” This is also correct, but you need to be aware of the difference in emphasis. If you offset the phrase with two commas, you are implying the phrase offset is not essential information. With this new example of one comma, you are including the information about the mother’s request as important. You can also leave out both commas and write: “Sometimes when the sun is out I go for an early run.” Offsetting “when the sun is out” makes it essential to the sentence, implying that you go for a run because the sun is out. It’s all about subtle emphasis and importance.

Comma Get a Handle on Commas

January 18, 2013 in Say What? with 8 Comments

Those dreaded commas. I think commas cause more confusion than any other bit of punctuation. Writers either overuse them or don’t use them enough or properly. So I will be going over numerous comma rules over the weeks to help you get a handle on those slippery things.

Material quoted in the form of dialogue or from text is traditionally introduced with a comma. If a quotation is introduced by that, whether, or a similar conjunction, no comma is needed.

It was Thoreau who wrote, “One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.”
She replied, “I hope you aren’t referring to us.”
Was it your mother who used to say that “a penny saved is a penny earned”?
You are now wondering whether “to speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Last year I posted about speaker tags and using commas to separate the speaker from the speech, but as a reminder, you cannot “sigh,” “cough,” “frown,” or “nod” speech. It is incorrect to write: “I’m tired,” she sighed. You can write: “I’m tired,” she said with a sigh” or “I’m tired.” She sighed.

More Like Me or I?

January 4, 2013 in Say What? with 2 Comments

Do you look more like me . . . or do you look more like I? The case of a pronoun following this kind of comparative structure, typically at the end of a sentence, depends on who or what is being compared.

If you write “My sister looks more like our father than I,” for example, one would assume that the “I” implies “I do.” But you wouldn’t fault someone for thinking you mean your sister looks more like your father than like you. This is often a source of confusion, so it’s best to reword for clarity. If the point is whether the sister looks more like the father, the pronoun should be objective (me, not I): my sister looks more like our father than she looks like me.

Instead of writing “My sister looks more like our father than me,” I might rewrite “My sister looks more like our father than like me.” That pretty much eliminates the problem. And if you add the word do to that first example, you won’t have any confusion either: “”My sister looks more like our father than I do.”