washington post: comma-error festival

Mr. Baker, you have made so many comma errors that you have earned a spot on Grammargrinch.blogspot.com. lee drury de cesare

Analysis Washingtonpost

As He Touts a 'Way Forward,' Bush Admits Errors of the Past

By Peter Baker

The evolution tracks the sharp deterioration not only of the U.S. position in Iraq, but also of Bush's position at home. Don’t use a comma to divide a correlative construction.

He added that generals have "reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes" and "they report that it does." An easy comma rule: put a comma before a coordinating conjunction joining two independent clauses.

"He's going to do what's in his heart of hearts and nobody can deter him from that course," said James Jay Carafano, a Heritage Foundation scholar. Second time: put a comma before a coordinating conjunction joining two independent clauses.

"He's never going to make everybody happy and he's not going to make even most people happy, and he shouldn't try. Third time: put a comma before a coordinating conjunction joining two independent clauses.

"The administration is making the same mistakes now that we made in Vietnam and I'm really sorry about that," said Jack J. Valenti, an aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Fourth time: put a comma before a coordinating conjunction joining two independent clauses.

Now, it said, dialogue has not worked, Arab states have not fully supported the Iraqi government and many Iraqi forces are "not yet ready to handle" the security threat. A newspaper fetish is to ignore the items-in-a-series comma rule, omitting the final comma. This practice conflicts with the newspaper practice of overusing commas to a faretheewell. The writer needs here to follow the items-in-a-series comma rule with three independent clauses’ comprising the series.

"And his problem is, he will then be held accountable for those results."

Superfluous comma: when a writer omits “that” beginning a subordinate clause, the writer does not substitute a comma for the “that” unless it acts as subject of the subordinate clause.