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Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2010Do to her
Hello: ---- What could the ginger-haired man do to her anyway? Resurrection - Page 85 Tucker Malarkey - Fiction - 2007 ---- Say we're adding other/more modifiers for "man" to the original sentence: "What could the ginger-haired, weak, and sometimes wobbly from work, man do to her anyway?" Do we need a comma after "man" now? I don't think so, but ... -- Thanks. Marius Hancu > Hello: > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > Do we need a comma after "man" now? I don't think so, but ... No, we don't.  SignatureSkitt (AmE) > ---- > What could the ginger-haired man do to her anyway? [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > > Do we need a comma after "man" now? I don't think so, but ... You've hit one of those order-of-adjective things. Better would be "What could the weak ginger-haired man, sometimes wobbly from work, do to her anyway?" It's still not the greatest sentence. The commas are needed there to set off "sometimes wobbly from work". SignatureBest -- Donna Richoux Donna Richoux filted: >> ---- >> What could the ginger-haired man do to her anyway? [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] >anyway?" It's still not the greatest sentence. The commas are needed >there to set off "sometimes wobbly from work". In that form, yes, but in Malarkey's phrasing, the comma after "work" is absolutely wrong....r SignatureA pessimist sees the glass as half empty. An optometrist asks whether you see the glass more full like this?...or like this? On 04 Feb 2010, R H Draney wrote > Donna Richoux filted: >> [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > In that form, yes, but in Malarkey's phrasing, the comma after > "work" is absolutely wrong....r Indeed; he's tripped up because the last attribute is a phrase rather than a single word. If you simply swap the "weak" and "wobbly from work" adjectives -- "What could the ginger-haired, sometimes wobbly from work, and weak man do to her anyway?" -- it's obvious that you can't put a comma after the final adjective. (Well, you *can*, of course, but not without showing that you're crap at punctuation.) SignatureCheers, Harvey CanEng and BrEng, indiscriminately mixed > On 04 Feb 2010, R H Draney wrote > > > Donna Richoux filted: > >>> ---- > >>> What could the ginger-haired man do to her anyway? [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] > man do to her anyway?" -- it's obvious that you can't put a comma > after the final adjective. Great point. Thank you all. Marius Hancu > Donna Richoux filted: > >> "What could the ginger-haired, weak, and sometimes wobbly from work, [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > In that form, yes, but in Malarkey's phrasing, the comma after "work" is > absolutely wrong....r My thought is that it's absolutely required, actually. A phrase like "wobbly from work" isn't normally used attributively. You'd have to mark it as an ad-hoc compound by hyphenating it (and in speech by saying it faster and setting it off with pauses). In this context, I'd say it's a parenthetical expression that should be set off with commas on both sides. ¬R Glenn Knickerbocker filted: >> Donna Richoux filted: >> >> "What could the ginger-haired, weak, and sometimes wobbly from work, [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >it's a parenthetical expression that should be set off with commas on >both sides. Would Charlie Brown have lusted after "that cute, little, red haired, girl"?...r SignatureA pessimist sees the glass as half empty. An optometrist asks whether you see the glass more full like this?...or like this? [...] > Would Charlie Brown have lusted after "that cute, little, red haired, > girl"?...r Good example. The difference is between parallel adjectives, which each apply equally and independent of the others, and which are thus separated by commas, and superposed adjectives, which build a little train of thought (the example Follett gives is "his battered old canvas fishing hat", which is not a hat that is battered, old, canvas, and fishing). SignatureCordially, Eric Walker, Owlcroft House http://owlcroft.com/english/ |
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