On 21/08/2012 23:10, Jonathan Blake wrote:
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 3:24 AM, Simon Osborne <outspaced@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
(er) 182: starboard and in a terrifying instant, you -> starboard and, in
a
terrifying instant, you [so: cf. Sections 72, 168, 173, etc.]
If we really come down to it, I'd prefer to change this to "starboard,
and in a terrifying instant, you" or the equivalent in all these
cases. The sentence needs a comma between the independent clauses (in
this case after "starboard"), but having a comma after "and" isn't
necessary.
However, tracking down and changing all of these would take a very,
very long time. Is this something we can live with?
This might be one of those UK vs. US things, because generally speaking I'm
used to seeing the comma after the 'and' rather than before it in this type
of sentence construction. The sub-clause (is that the correct term??) here
is 'in a terrifying instant', which is why it is 'fenced off by the commas.
If you remove the phrase, the sentence works correctly: "The impact sends
the ship careering violently to starboard and you are flung head-first over
the ship’s rail into the sea."
The reason I prefer it the way I do (I don't think this is because I'm
from the US) is because that sentence actually needs a comma between
the independent clauses.
"The impact sends the ship careering violently to starboard, and you
are flung head-first over the ship’s rail into the sea."
If you add the 'and' to that sub-clause, though, the sentence breaks if the
phrase is removed: "The impact sends the ship careering violently to
starboard you are flung head-first over the ship’s rail into the sea."
I see what you mean, but the "and" isn't inside the commas because
it's part of the introductory phrase of that clause. If we take the
second independent clause and make it a full-fledged sentence, it
would probably take a comma after "instant"
"In a terrifying instant, you are flung head-first over the ship’s
rail into the sea."
Standardizing on either would require entirely too much effort to be
worth it in my opinion. Unless someone can narrow the focus of my
regular expressions, we'd have to review 2127 occurrences of
"\s(for|and|nor|but|or|yet|so),\s" or 3879 occurrences of
",\s(for|and|nor|but|or|yet|so)\s[^.]+,".
