![]() Other ‘operative.’ On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about ‘the Invalidating the District of Columbia’s gun ban (subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court) held that “the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one ‘prefatory’ and the As Adam Freedman wrote in this newspaper in 2007, a Federal District Court ruling Hurt, confusion and argumentation over the last 223 years. The one after “state” would be used today the one after “arms” would not the one after “militia” is ambiguous and all three have caused a world of You can glimpse a reason for this codification - which emphasized consistency rather than sound - by looking at the opening of the Second Amendment of the Constitution (1789):Ī well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”īy about a century later, comma rules had been codified such that both commas in the sentence (after “acknowledged” and “fortune”) would be dispensed with. So in the first line of “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), Jane Austen wrote: They felt like it, which was usually when a natural pause seemed to occur. ![]() In the 19th century and earlier (when rules were generally more lax than they are today), comma use was pretty much a crapshoot. Historically, and the comma shows this clearly. As I said, what’s right and wrong changes I’ll start with the latter because the protocol for comma use is so complicated and contingent. The two big players in the field are the period and the comma. ![]() And as Truss didn’t adequately acknowledge, even the Maybe more than any other element of writing, punctuation combines rules with issues of sound, preference and personal style. Although Truss’s focus on errors drew the ire, if not the fire, of grammarians, linguists and other “descriptivists,” her book was, for the most part, harmless and legitimate. Is it safe to talk about punctuation again? Eight years ago, Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” took, in the words of her subtitle, a “Zero Tolerance Approach” Some use more commas than others do.Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing. The fact is that people vary in their use of commas. Is it correct to omit the comma before and in these two sentences? Maybe it's not strictly correct, but it's not a big problem and what can we do about it anyway? I purposely omitted a comma before 'and ' in the previous sentence because having one there would interrupt the sentence too much. I would use a comma before 'and ' in that sentence. We should definitely stay in touch over the holidays and hopefully I will be seeing you in the office in January. Maybe there is no comma before 'and ' in the above sentence because both clauses have a common subject. I can't think of a reason that certain words following 'and ' would be more likely to be assoociated with the absence of a comma. For example,I will review your suggestions and then I will add my comments to the document. You always have to higlight words that you are talking about. Speaking of important things, your absence of highlighting 'then ' makes me have to do more work to know if you meant 'either then ' or 'then '. However, I’ve noticed that the rule is often ignored – even in formal writing – when and is followed by either 'then 'or 'hopefully '. ![]() But since commas are only very important when their presence or absence affects the meaning, it is not surprising that they are not always used as you use them. This is a basic rule that I always try to follow. AnonymousThere should be a comma before 'and 'when ( it is ) used to connect t wo independent clauses. ![]()
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