Last week, I repaired the first half of a sentence inspired by one of my mum’s most grammatically awkward sentences (sorry, Mum). I worked through some of the murkier waters of writing series of items like this one:
She’s got size-five shoes, dresses, and handbags.
Are there size-five dresses? And what are size-five handbags? You can read last week’s blog by clicking here.
This week, we’ll delve into the second half of last week’s sentence. Here’s the sentence as it stands at the moment:
How do we understand that it’s time for another economic boom, for great resurgence and for an enormous drop in unemployment, and also nearly time for a crash, both at once?
Let me just remind you what we’re aiming for with the sentence. We want to present a choice between a group of three things and another single thing. Our three items were these: time for another economic boom, for great resurgence and for an enormous drop in unemployment. Our other single item was this: also nearly time for a crash.
The first of two problems with the sentence regards the Oxford or serial comma.
I wrote a blog about it, which you can read here. However, I’ll summarise it quickly. The Oxford comma is the comma that comes before the ‘and’ or the ‘or’ that introduces the final item in a series. The first sentence following has an Oxford comma, and the second doesn’t:
You, me, or her
Apples, oranges and pears
As it stands, our sentence doesn’t use an Oxford comma—there’s no comma before ‘and’:
‘… for another economic boom, for great resurgence and for an enormous drop in unemployment …’
However, there’s some trouble waiting to happen here. Let me present you with a series that has a compound item—‘black and white’:
We sell t-shirts in orange, black and white, and blue.
Hold a finger over ‘, and blue’, and notice that the sentence appears to be a series of three items without an Oxford comma, where black and white are two separate items. When you remove your finger, however, the Oxford comma does its job, introducing the final item in the series (‘blue’) and making it clear that ‘black and white’ is a single compound entry.
Now compare the t-shirt sentence with our sentence. It looks suspiciously similar:
How do we understand that it’s time for another economic boom, for great resurgence and for an enormous drop in unemployment, and also nearly time for a crash, both at once?
It almost looks as though ‘for great resurgence and for an enormous drop in unemployment’ is a compound item like ‘black and white’. It then looks as though ‘also nearly time for a crash’ is the final item in the series, introduced by an Oxford comma just like ‘blue’ in the t-shirt sentence. This is a confusion we need to avoid.
We need to make sure that ‘for great resurgence and for an enormous drop in unemployment’ cannot be mistaken for a compound item. Therefore, we’ll place an Oxford comma between those items:
How do we understand that it’s time for another economic boom, for great resurgence, and for an enormous drop in unemployment, and also nearly time for a crash, both at once?
That’s another grammar victory for this sentence!
However, there’s one final improvement we can make. The second part of the sentence is supposed to stand as an alternative to the first part. Something like this:
[for another economic boom, for great resurgence, for an enormous drop in unemployment]
versus
[also nearly time for a crash]
Or like:
Would you like tea, or would you like coffee?
And just like in that tea-and-coffee example, a comma often makes this type of major separation. All the stuff before the comma vs. all the stuff after the comma. But in our sentence, we repeatedly used commas for tiny separations—between the items in a series. And immediately after using commas for that tiny job, we tried to use a comma for its major job again. While there may not be anything grammatically wrong with this, I’ll argue that it’s the last thing we want to do when our aim is reader-friendly sentences. So, I’m going to rephrase parts of the sentence to make the function of the sentence as clear as I can through words and not just commas. Here’s my edit:
How do we understand that it’s both time for another economic boom, for great resurgence, and for an enormous drop in unemployment, and also nearly time for a crash?
Here’s my rationale: By using ‘both’ up front, we promise the reader two overall options right away. And by using similar phrasing to introduce both options, they stand out compared to the rest of the sentence. I used ‘… both time for …’ and ‘… also nearly time for …’.
At last, I believe we’ve got a clear, readable sentence that I’d happily defend before a grammar Supreme Court.
We moved from this:
How do we understand that it’s time for another economic boom, great resurgence and an enormous drop in unemployment, and also nearly time for a crash, both at once?
To this:
How do we understand that it’s both time for another economic boom, for great resurgence, and for an enormous drop in unemployment, and also nearly time for a crash?
A subtle but effective change, I think.
And now we can all remember that, while Oxford commas are not essential, you want to steer clear of accidentally creating compound items. And we can remember that commas do so many tasks. Sometimes, that means that commas will repeatedly perform one task immediately before performing a completely different task. In these situations, I’d make a strong argument that some careful phrasing can really help indicate what’s going on in the sentence instead of leaving it entirely in the hands of a comma.
This concludes my repair of the sentence. I know my mum’s pleased with my repair of her sentence—the one that inspired this whole blog—and I also hope that I’ve been able to help you in some way. You know, I could help you specifically if you’d like. Feel free to drop any super-tricky sentences in the comments section below.
Have an awesome week!
And for lots more grammar pointers, check out My Big Blog Directory.
But if you’d like some entertainment instead, take a look at Glimpses—my free book of short stories.
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