Before I had any right to dismiss Twihards or criticize the psychologically unhealthy relationship model that Bella Swan and Edward Cullen present, I felt obliged to read the books. So I did. All four novels, one novella, and an incomplete document in portable format. The content lived down to my expectations, but I was unprepared for how poorly crafted the saga is. Contact: reasoningwithvampires@gmail.com

4th February 2012

Question with 49 notes

Anonymous asked: I'm a little confused about how the comma in your last post was incorrect. I interpreted the 'and' as combining two sentences: "I pulled out a letter. I pulled out a folded schedule of courses." If that was the case, than the comma would be separating the two independent clauses, which would mean it was correctly used. Could you elaborate as to why it was incorrect?

You’re partially correct. If that were the case, then the comma would be separating two independent clauses. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

I pulled out the letter, and a folded schedule of courses.

In your interpretation, you’re adding elements to the sentence that don’t exist. You’re adding an imaginary subject and predicate to make the second independent clause. I guess it’s okay if you want to do that, but you should keep the comma imaginary, too.

  1. zax-tsdc said: Is it that hard to recall that the commas only appear when a list has at least three items?
  2. anditisalways-1895 said: “I pulled out a letter, *something else. maybe a pen?*, and a folded schedule of courses.”<—That would have been fine. Is it really that difficult? Also, congrats to the Anon, trying to correct grammar, whilst using “than ” in place of “then2. xD
  3. baileybubble said: Some anon from this thread just wrote, “You don’t put a semicolon in front a conjunction” in my inbox in response to my reply. Your point? In the original anon’s post (I pulled out a letter. I pulled out a folded…) THERE IS NO CONJUNCTION. Idiot.
  4. junosomething said: For the record, the Oxford comma is still a thing. She probably *thought* she was using it properly, but there weren’t enough “things” in her sentence to justify its use. p.s. Oxford comma fangrrlz 4 lyfe!
  5. tinhoman said: If the sentence was actually “I pulled out a letter, I pulled out a folded schedule of courses.” then the comma would still be a splice. And the writing would be even worse.
  6. daretobefearless said: I like this anon. It’s one of the polite ones :D
  7. horseonaspaceship said: The comma is more unnecessary than anything. Maybe if she’d pulled out one or two things more it would have been needed lol.
  8. yggdrasilly said: Not to mention Anon used “than” instead of “then”. Amateurs. :P
  9. reasoningwithvampires posted this