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Hello!
Reading The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, I found this sentence:
He saw us coming, and unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile.
If I wrote the same thing, I would have put the comma after "and" to separate unaware that we had learned of his treachery because this part describes the state in which he greeted us.
He saw us coming, and greeted us with a smile. Fine
He saw us coming, and, unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile. I thinks this way it is more stylistically clear. Though, who am I to argue with Strunk and White?!
What would you say?
I agree with you on all counts. Only I don't like the sandwich ',and,' at all. It looks forced, and seems to draw undue attention to itself.
It can also work like this: Since you are ok with 'He saw us coming, and greeted us with a smile' ( and I am too) , what if one sees the 2nd comma (in the original statement) as not related to the 1st, but just as a way to break up the long sentence?
And there is also the matter of how the music sounds when read aloud, or even played privately in your mind. This is quite a different kind of utility of the punctuations.
"He saw us coming, and greeted us with a smile." Why is there a comma in that sentence? Maybe there is a rule I am unaware of, but I would write it without a comma. With that, I agree with Robert about the sandwiched and, and I agree with Anna that "unaware that we had learned of his treachery" should be set apart. Your quote from Strunk and White is not logical and it makes me wonder if it might be a typo.
Anna said
If I wrote the same thing, I would have put the comma after "and"
What would you say?
The same. I know this is heresy, but Elements of Style is overrated as a writing guide. If you want a larger and far superior book to improve your writing, I recommend The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader's Perspective.
Dick said
"He saw us coming, and greeted us with a smile." Why is there a comma in that sentence? Maybe there is a rule I am unaware of, but I would write it without a comma. With that, I agree with Robert about the sandwiched and, and I agree with Anna that "unaware that we had learned of his treachery" should be set apart. Your quote from Strunk and White is not logical and it makes me wonder if it might be a typo.
I railed against commas when I was in school, but I wasn't sure why I hated them. I know now. It's because when used to separate items in a list, the items were included in the sense pf the sentence, but when used to set off an "aside", the phrase is excluded from the sense of sentence.
I've since started using dashes rather than commas for "asides" as they more clearly signal that there is something set apart. In the last 20 years or so, I find that practice becoming mire and more common, to the point that I have a WTF moment when I read across something that uses commas.
The use or non-use of commas is undoubtedly one of the most contentious, even among style manuals and writer guides. I keep 6 on my bookshelf, and they're pretty much the only physical books I refer to these days (if I can't find what I need at a trusted online source). FYI, those books are:
- The Elements of Style: Strunk and White
- Grammar Smart: The Princeton Review
- U.S. News & World Report Stylebook
- Writers INC: Sebranek, Meyer, Kemper
- Essentials for the Scientific and Technical Writer: Hardy Hoover
- A Style Manual for Technical Writers and Editors: S.J Reisman @ Lockheed (out of print)
Every one of those sources makes (slightly) different recommendations regarding commas, and much of that difference is related to the presentation style used by the writer, with a smattering of personal choice allowed in some cases.
Of course, some commas are required to avoid ambiguity, others are recommended for pace or cadence, and some are just plain wrong. For Anna's original question, I could see writing that sentence as:
He saw us coming and, unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile. (Glenn's answer)
He saw us coming and — unaware that we had learned of his treachery — greeted us with a smile. (deaconB's answer)
Note that's an em-dash and not an en-dash (the symbols used in this sentence are simple hyphens). The en-dash is properly used to indicate ranges, such as in this sentence: Confusion between different types of dashes started showing up around 1985–1986.
I would also suggest the following solution: He saw us coming and (unaware that we had learned of his treachery) greeted us with a smile.
Too many parenthetical comments can quickly clutter writing, annoy the reader, and should be used sparingly. In practice, I find myself using all three solutions depending on what "feels" best for the content at hand. However, I prefer using extra spaces around em-dashes, but not around en-dashes. Helps to further set-off the words between them. But that practice is also contentious, and becoming more a matter of style.
People who've only ever encountered digital typography are usually unaware of the utter contempt in which older printers hold digital typography. There are a lot of invalid statements made that simply aren't true when it comes to foundry type.
For instance, an inch is not 72 points. That's only an approximation. Look at a line gauge, and you'll see that 10 inches is about 722 or 723 points.
Font size in foundry type is the size of the slug on which the type is cast.and with some type faces, the foundry gives you more built-in 'leading" than with others. Digital fonts have that determined by a mathematical equation, rather than by an an aesthetic judgment. All digital type rests on the baseline, but in foundry type (or good hand-painted signs), letters with a rounded bottom like O or U dip slightly below the bottom of other letters, because that looks better.
An en-dash and an em-dash are the width of an M and of an N. Because printers sometimes ran short of ems and ens, foundries sold "generic" ems and ens, em-dashed, en-dashes, periods, commas, single and double opening and closing quotes, in packages of generic "sorts". When a printer was "out of sorts", he couldn't work. Breaking up print jobs and sorting into a California job case (a tray with compartments) was slow work, because among other things, he needed to mind his Ps and Qs,
High end printers bought larger fonts, but junk printers relied heavily on generic sorts. A generic em was as wide as it was tall, and the the generic en was half as wide; typically, the true em for a type font was about 80-90% as wide as it was tall, and the en was about 60% as wide as an em. Before the IBM Composer a proportional-spacing version of the Selectric, was introduced in the 1960s, they made the IBM Executive, a proportional-spacing typebar electric typewriter. Letters were 2 to 5 units wide, and the spacebar was split, giving 2-3 units of space per press. M was 5 units wide, N was 4 units, while m was 5 units and n was 3 units. Setting justified type on the Executive was a real pain; you had to type twice and calculate in your head how much spacing to put between words, but the results looked as nice as linotypography (which was considered junky typesetting compared to high-end handset type, but better than digital type.)
Which is the long way around the barn to explain why, but the only thing one can say for sure about ems and ens, is that ems are wider. In digital type, I prefer em-dashes set off with em-spaces, but when dealing with "real" typesetting, one really has to find a goof typographer or resign oneself to AA charges.
deaconB said
All digital type rests on the baseline, but in foundry type (or good hand-painted signs), letters with a rounded bottom like O or U dip slightly below the bottom of other letters, because that looks better.
Which can be accomplished in digital typography on a letter-by-letter basis – parts of the process can be automated to some extent, depending on what application one might be using – or by modifying existing fonts or building custom fonts. I suppose there are some digital fonts built this way. I wouldn't want to reset a novel a letter or two at time, but for headers or posters it can be worth the trouble. Most people don't bother.
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