User talk:Nicolemarie0

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Please leave any questions or comments here and I will make sure to answer them.

Thanks!

--Nicolemarie0 (talk) 23:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Too many commas, and other grammatical issues

Hi Nicolemarie0, I've just been looking at some of your contributions and it seems, to me, that you have often added commas where they are unnecessary.

If you look at MOS:COMMA, this section starts with: Commas are the most frequently used marks in punctuation and can be the most difficult to use well.

It does state under the second dot point: Dates in month–day–year format also require a comma after the day and after the year—but it doesn't state that a comma is required every time a year-only date is mentioned.

For short sentences, e.g. "In 1989 Mr X went to Y.", changing to "In 1989, Mr X went to Y." is probably unnecessary, unless you particularly want to place more emphasis on him doing it in 1989, rather than on him going there.

Among the reasons for using a comma are to mark a short pause for breath when reading text aloud, or to separate clauses, or to add emphasis.

One of your edits resulted in this sentence having no less than six commas, which is overkill, and just makes it too bitty, It also places excessive emphasis on which years the work was done, rather than on the works themselves.

"In 1991, Daniel Blaufuks published, with Paul Bowles, My Tangier, and in 1994, the London Diaries, followed by Ein Tag in Mostar (1995) and Uma Viagem a S. Petersburgo (1998)."

The original had only four commas, and scans perfectly well:

"In 1991 Daniel Blaufuks published, with Paul Bowles, My Tangier, and in 1994 the London Diaries, followed by Ein Tag in Mostar (1995) and Uma Viagem a S. Petersburgo (1998)."

I often find that to improve a sentence, if I feel the need to add a comma at some point to clarify the meaning or improve the style, I may need to delete a comma elsewhere in the sentence. At other times, some judgement is required to pick the right point, where the natural flow of the sentence changes. For example, in the article on Marianne Majerus you changed this sentence:

"After taking her international baccalaureate at the Lycée Hubert Clément she studied in England graduating in Economics and in English Literature."

You added a comma to make it read:

"After taking her international baccalaureate at the Lycée Hubert Clément, she studied in England graduating in Economics and in English Literature."

I would have changed it to:

"After taking her international baccalaureate at the Lycée Hubert Clément she studied in England, graduating in Economics and in English Literature."

My advice is to take a little time and try to get a feel for what works, and a sense of balance between clarity and elegance, rather than just following rules.

Apart from that, please also check that if you make a change, that the rest of the sentence remains in grammatical agreement. Also note that particular articles may be written using different varieties of English spelling—for example, Harold Cazneaux was an Australian photographer, so changing organised (Australian English) to organized (US English) isn't really appropriate. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 10:29, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Response

Thank you for your advice and suggestions. I really appreciate it and will keep your advice in mind while editing.

Thank you, --Nicolemarie0 (talk) 22:32, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]