Answer to todays Grammar Challenge on the sentence, At the Mexican food festival I only ate one taco but my friend Gus ate twelve.: ***** There are few minor issues here. 1) Introductory prepositional phrases are normally followed by a comma unless they are short. Because short is subjective, its not a clear problem here. My rule of thumb is four words or more requires a comma. Id put one after FESTIVAL for that reason. 2) The placement of ONLY is inexact. Few would notice or object, but its possible to read this so that ONLY modifies the ensuing word, ATE -- meaning the speaker did nothing other than eat one taco. A more precise placement would put it nearer the word it intends to modify -- ONE. (...I ate only one taco...) 3) Two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction like BUT require a comma. So, a comma is needed between TACO and BUT. I figured some folks would call for commas around GUS, and that wouldnt be wrong if GUS is considered an appositive. But it need not be an appositive. In fact, it probably isnt, as that would imply that GUS is the speakers only friend (or at least only friend in the context of the narrative). I think its better without the commas.
Posted on: Mon, 05 May 2014 23:26:00 +0000
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