Commasutra

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out. -- Oscar Wilde As a blogger who blogs about writing, I try my damnedest to stay away from referring to grammar geek favorites like attributive adjective, future perfect progressive, and reflexive pronoun on the theory that once you’ve graduated eighth grade, references to terminology like this can cause a person to lose all interest in becoming a better writer. So it pains me to have to refer to a compound predicate, but refer I must because it's the cause of one of the most common errors I see. Listen up. A compound predicate occurs when two or more verbs share the same subject. Usually they’re connected with the word “and.” In such a case, the phrases, the two predicates, are not divided by a comma. The way I see it a lot: Silas ambled through the Greek and Roman galleries, and scrutinized the statue of Dionysos. The way I wish I saw it more often: Silas ambled through the Greek and Roman galleries and scrutinized the statue of Dionysos. While it’s true that you might pause for a sec after the word that comes before “and” (in this case, “galleries”), that doesn’t mean it requires what Washington Post grammar guru Bill Walsh calls a "take a breath" comma. Both the verbs, “ambled” and “scrutinized,” refer to Silas, so no comma needs to divide them. Even sentences like this that are much more complicated don’t take a comma: Jose clapped his hands as Lucia, the singing waitress, started to serve his dinner of minestrone, carpaccio, and a glass of rare Vallana Spanna del Piemonte and joined with her in singing “Fin ch'han dal vino” from Act I, Scene V of “Don Giovanni.” No doubt you took an eencie-beencie teeny-tiny breath between "Piemonte" and “and,” and I’m glad you did, since, as my grandmother Dora would have said, I want you should be happy. But what you don’t need to do is add a comma there. Jose is the subject and “clapped” and “joined” are the verbs. Watch out for this common sentence construction and help prevent me from ever again having to use the phrase compound predicate!

Comments

[patricia]

okay, so what's the last word on serial commas? I wouldn't have put one after carpaccio and admit that it drives me bonkers when others do.

[Dan Santow]

Patricia, there are two schools of thought on the serial comma. There’s AP, which says to use it only if by not using it confusing would follow or if the items in the series are “a complex series of phases” (2007 AP Style, page 325). That all sounds pretty subjective to me. Then there’s the University of Chicago Manual of Style, with which I agree: “A comma … should appear before the conjunction. Chicago strongly recommends this widely practiced usage … since it prevents ambiguity.”