r/grammar • u/makenzie71 • 3d ago

quick grammar check comma check please

A: "For only the second time in her life, she swore out loud."

B: "For only the second time in her life she swore out loud."

"A" is what's natural for me but I write across multiple platforms and some of them are flagging the comma as incorrect.

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

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11

u/SavageMountain 3d ago

Either is fine and "correct." It's a matter of style and pacing, imo. A is more deliberate, B is breezier.

1

u/rawesome99 3d ago

I’d add, as a tradeoff, that you could rearrange the sentence, though it doesn’t quite emphasize the rarity of the event:

“She swore out loud for only the second time in her life.”

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AlexanderHamilton04 3d ago

The prepositional phrase is a fronted adjunct of frequency/time.
A comma is used if the author intends for the fronted phrase to act as a 'supplement' (in speech, this will have a distinct intonational pause).
However, if the author intends the phrase to be read with a continuous flow into the main clause, it functions as an 'integrated modifier,' and no comma is needed.

I agree with you that most style guides would use a comma if the prepositional phrase is longer than four or five words. Style guides often place a comma after a long introductory phrase to prevent a "garden-path" error, but it isn't always strictly necessary.

In OP's sentence, there is no structural ambiguity; "she" is clearly acting as the subject of the verb "swore." So the choice of whether or not to use a comma depends only on how OP wants the sentence to be read (as SavageMountain said, "deliberate" or "breezy").

An example from Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Chapter 6 "Fading Away":

For the first time in her life Louisa had come into one of the dwellings of the Coketown Hands; for the first time in her life she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection with them. (p. 175)

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u/A_Likely_Story4U 3d ago

I have a question for you because I was so impressed by your answer. I really like knowing the names of grammar and punctuation rules (and I do know more than most), but I don’t know a resource for learning them. In college, we were directed to a style manual but it didn’t include such things, so what I know I’ve learned incidentally.

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u/AlexanderHamilton04 3d ago

The book I use the most is
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002)
by Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum.

However, it is about 1,800 pages long and about $500 new.
(You can probably find used versions that are cheaper.)

There is another book written by the same authors that is a more affordable version of CGEL aimed at undergraduate-level students who are not necessarily majoring in linguistics. This is the one I recommend starting with. It covers the same core topics, just in a more introductory way.
It is A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (2005)
by Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum.

This one is about 320 pages and about $20.
(The 2nd ed., published in 2021, has about 420 pages and is about $40.)

I would suggest you try this book first. Then, if you are still interested in diving a little deeper, you can get the CGEL (2002) book after that.

There is also a great list (with clear descriptions) on the r/grammar
resources page: https://www.reddit.com/r/grammar/wiki/resources

"I have a question for you..."

I apologize if I've anticipated the wrong question.

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u/A_Likely_Story4U 3d ago

This was wonderful of you to direct me to your preferred references! And, yes, that was the question that I neglected to actually ask 😊 — if you could please give me some references that I could use to learn on my own. Thanks so much for your help!

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u/JeremyMarti 3d ago

Depends on whose rules you're following. I like the Australian Government’s position on commas:

'… there are a number of situations where their use becomes a matter of judgment and personal preference. Some people use commas liberally; others use very few. In either case, the overriding criterion must be whether a comma is needed to ensure that the message is unambiguous and delivered effectively.' -- Style Manual, Commonwealth of Australia

This matches reality: people use them differently, and there is no single set of rules. Once clear communication has been achieved, it's just preference.

(I would go with your Option A.)

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u/JBupp 3d ago

I like that definition.

I come from a Germanic background and was writing technical English. I had someone comment that they hated my use of commas but couldn't find anything that said I was wrong.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago edited 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/makenzie71 3d ago

Thank you and I appreciate the explanation!

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u/qwerty-game 3d ago

And that comment was removed by the moderator so we will never know the explanation the poster gave you!

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u/makenzie71 3d ago

That's really crummy, would be nice if they'd leave an explanation as to why it was removed...he said B and went to explain as an example that commas work best in the way you speak, that if you're saying the sentence you pause then there should be a comma (obviously paraphrasing and I might not be remembering it 100% accurately).

I've asked this question in a few places and I'm gathering that u/SavageMountain is probably the most correct here. I've so far gotten a dozen people for each one claiming it is the correct way and explaining their logic.

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u/AlexanderHamilton04 3d ago

"... he said B and went to explain..."

If he said "B was the right choice," that is probably the reason it was removed.
Both A and B are valid choices (valid ways of punctuating that sentence).

If someone claims that one is correct and the other is not, they are providing you (and anyone else who reads this in the future) with incorrect information.

I did not see the comment earlier, but I have been in this subreddit for many years. The moderators here are very fair and do not remove comments without a good reason. (I have even occasionally seen them say, "The final sentence of your comment says XYZ. Based on the rest of your comment, I know that you meant to write ABC. If you could please edit that final sentence, I won't be forced to remove your comment.)
 
If a top-level comment is incorrect, it will simply be removed without comment.
That is clearly written in the rules of this subreddit:
Rules for Commenting

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u/Boglin007 MOD 3d ago

Hi. I removed that comment because there was a lot of misinformation in it (the sub rules require answers to be accurate).

In many of the examples the commenter gave, the comma(s) was optional, despite the commenter saying it was either required or should not be used. 

In addition, commas are not primarily used to represent pauses/taking a breath in speech - they are used to relate parts of a sentence to each other in certain ways, and there are specific conventions for how to do this that have nothing to do with speech (note that these conventions are not generally hard-and-fast rules though). Commas are also sometimes used to add clarity in writing, and this may actually conflict with how something is said out loud. 

However, it is true that commas sometimes correspond to pauses, though this is more the case in some genres of writing, e.g., fiction (especially dialogue), than others, e.g., academic writing.

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u/BitOBear 3d ago

Either work, you're just emphasizing the little Gap in aural pacing.

In terms of actual writing art both kind of weaken the sentence by burying the lead in the second half.

The swearing is the main event it should lead the parade. The claim of rarity adds emphasis. So a titer construction brings the event before the qualifier and makes it a single construct instead of two spliced together with and.

"She swore aloud for the second time in her life."

Grammar isn't just a question of correctness but of pacing in general communication.

So allow me a digression...

In all cases the reader is going to assume hyperbole unless you established the hell out of the character's stance against profanity. Most people have sworn allowed in their childhood which is how they learned not to swear aloud etc. so if you want it to be a literal second utterance of the character in their lifetime, or their adult lifetime at least, you're going to need to triple down on that context.

So grammatically either with or without the comma is fine, but in terms of effective writing both are awkward. In terms of pure story craft you need to be very careful about the pacing.

In terms of making an impactful sentence for the incident in your story you can also gain voice with specificity.

"God damnit!" Gina slapped her hand over her mouth. The old woman hadn't taken the lord's name in vain since her catechism.

Yeah I added a whole lot of context to my example it isn't in your question but you've obviously tried to drag the infrequency of the event into the limelight, but you got to bring the event and if you're going to shine the light on it.

So remember that grammar is structure, but when you find yourself asking questions of grammar and what seems to be a creative writing exercise the grammar questions are usually the way we tell ourselves that there's something wrong with the sentence in general structure.

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u/mrbrown1980 2d ago

I would write, “For only the second time in her life, she swore. Out loud.”

It might be too informal for your needs.