grammar hubris

[merchimerch]

Oh I have lousy grammar and a thick skull; I am a wretch.

I got so proud because in this one sentence I found an adjectival phrase and was very very careful not to put any commas in it, only to find (after Prof. H. took a look at it) that there was an adjectival phrase earlier in *the very same sentence* that I had thrown commas into.

harumph

Comments

[iyindo.livejournal.com]

what do you mean by adjectival phrase?

[merchimerch.livejournal.com]

I mean restrictive terms of identification. (See Strunk + White p. 3)

Basically I'm addicted to putting commas into phrases like "The online journal, Image and Narrative," because you use them in parenthetical phrases. It's something I find really hard to catch, when I make the error and was really proud when I caught myself before putting a comma into the phrase "Uzbek pop singer Sevara Nazarkhan" but I put them into the phrase above which was in the very same sentence (*headdesk*).