As a lot of people know, my sister, Alexandra Christian, and I are pretty much the entire standing staff of Little Red Hen Romance. We both write stories and novels for the press, and we edit one another. There are many advantages to having your beloved sister as your editor. But there are times, particularly for Lexie, when it’s a real pain in the ass.
Lex has just finished a truly amazing Sherlock Holmes novella that should be coming out in the next few weeks, and I’ve been working on the copy edit. Lex is one of the most amazing, original, intelligent writers I know, and her grammar and punctuation are almost perfect. But that girl will party hearty with a comma; she gets it drunk and lets it sprawl naked in the most ungodly places or forgets it entirely and leaves it dead in a ditch. As a former composition instructor, I tend to lose my mind about this on a regular basis. And since this is apparently becoming a hot topic issue (see here: Daniel McMahon for Business Insider 5-2-16), we thought it might instructive or at least entertaining to see our latest exchange on the subject:
THE SAME STUPID COMMA MISTAKE THREE TIMES, ALL FROM THE SAME PARAGRAPH!!!!!!!
Okay, you’re gonna learn how to do this if it kills us both.
Example Number One:
As written by the brilliant Lexie Christian:
The unfortunate doorman’s coat and hat offered an easy disguise and this time he managed to pass through the doors without incident.
This sentence is two independent clauses joined by the conjunction “and.” As are all of these examples. And it’s the EASIEST FREAKIN THING IN THE WORLD TO IDENTIFY!!!!
So, what are our two clauses? How do I know we have two? We start with the verbs. What are the verbs?
1) offered
2) managed
Okay, so who or what offered? The unfortunate doorman’s coat and hat – so there we have the spine of clause number one, “coat and hat offered.” Everything that tells us information about the coat and hat (whose it was [the doorman] and what he was like [unfortunate]) and what they offered and how [an easy disguise]) are part and parcel of that clause. So Clause Number One is:
The unfortunate doorman’s coat and hat offered an easy disguise.
So our next verb is managed. Who or what managed? He, Sherlock, our intrepid hero. Everything about him and what he managed is Clause Number Two:
This time [when he managed] he managed [there’s that spine] to pass through the doors [what he managed to do] without incident [how he did it].
Because neither of these clauses begins with an adverb like when or as or because or anything else that would turn it into a dependent clause/super-adverb supporting the other that can’t stand alone, these are two independent clauses joined with nothing more than the most common and beloved of all conjunctions, and. So you put a FUCKING COMMA IN FRONT OF THE AND!!! And thus after edits it becomes:
The unfortunate doorman’s coat and hat offered an easy disguise, and this time he managed to pass through the doors without incident.
SIDE NOTE ON DEPENDENT CLAUSES WHICH YOU ALMOST NEVER USE AND USUALLY GET RIGHT WHEN YOU DO: To make these the joining of a dependent clause to an independent clause, one of these clauses has to become a super-adverb. If it comes at the beginning, you need a comma:
Because the unfortunate doorman’s coat and hat offered an easy disguise, this time he managed to pass through the doors without incident.
But if it comes at the end, you don’t:
The unfortunate doorman’s coat and hat offered an easy disguise when this time he managed to pass through the doors without incident.
Your way, the two independent clauses is MUCH BETTER; it’s stronger and gives the reader chunks of easily visualized information. It was Mark Twain’s favorite sentence construction. AND HE ALWAYS PUT THE DAMNED COMMA IN IT!!!
So on to Example Number Two. As written, thus:
A small stage had been set up along the back wall and the cozy chaises by the fire had been moved aside to accommodate more tables.
What are the verbs:
1)had been set up
2)had been moved (accommodate is also a verb, but by adding the “to” to it, you’re using it as part of an adverb modifying had been moved; it tells why the moving was done. Lesser minds would be confused by this; I know you can see it.)
What had been set up? Stage
What had been moved? Chaises
So our two clauses are:
1) A small stage had been set up along the back wall.
2) The cozy chaises by the fire had been moved aside to accommodate more tables.
What is joining them? There’s our lil buddy and again.
So our edited sentence becomes:
A small stage had been set up along the back wall, and the cozy chaises by the fire had been moved aside to accommodate more tables.
And finally, coming to you live from the exact same descriptive paragraph, I bring you Example Number Three:
The entire room was swathed in red and gold and the heavy musk of opium hung in the air.
Verbs?
1) was swathed
2) hung
What was swathed? Room
What hung? Musk
Two clauses then?
1) The entire room was swathed in red and gold.
2) The heavy musk of opium hung in the air.
Add our friend and and the comma it should have rode in on:
The entire room was swathed in red and gold, and the heavy musk of opium hung in the air.
If you could ever just absorb that this is WHY this comma needs to be there, I promise, you’ll just put it there naturally without having to go through this half-assed diagraming of the sentence. But just saying, “Fuck it, I can’t do commas; sue me,” looks like a consistent, habitual amateur mistake, the kind of thing that can make less imaginative editors who don’t love you and your writing like I do dismiss you as a lightweight. And that just is not acceptable. Every one of these sentences is brilliant; you’ve compacted massive amounts of vibrant information into just a few words and created a whole scene. So just get the commas right!
Lucy Blue Writes 