Grammar Stickler

It’s time to play Spot the Comma Splice! From today’s arti­cles on the Bozeman Daily Chronicle Web site:

As of Saturday after­noon prices for gas var­ied around Bozeman with the Loaf & Jug on Eighth Avenue and College Street, at $4.19 per gal­lon, the Loaf & Jug at 19th Avenue and Main Street at $4.15 and the Exxon on North Seventh Avenue near Interstate 90 at $4.14.

This selec­tion should not have a comma after the words “College Street.” There’s no gram­mat­i­cal rea­son for it. There prob­a­bly should be a comma after “As of Saturday after­noon” since it mod­i­fies the entire sen­tence. Next from an arti­cle in today’s edi­tion of the paper:

Forrest said she hopes the block party will become an annual affair, and that other Bozeman neigh­bor­hoods will work to become more cohesive.

The comma after “annual affair” is unneeded. It’s join­ing two rel­a­tive clauses, not two inde­pen­dent sen­tences. From a news brief in the paper:

MSU’s College of Agriculture presents the award to an indi­vid­ual or cou­ple who is, or has been, involved in pro­duc­tion or agribusi­ness agri­cul­ture, and has exhib­ited out­stand­ing lead­er­ship in Montana agriculture.

This one’s a bit tricky. The com­mas around “or has been” are per­fectly fine, but no comma is needed after “agribusi­ness agri­cul­ture” since the con­junc­tion is join­ing a com­pound pred­i­cate within a rel­a­tive clause (the one begin­ning with “who”), not two inde­pen­dent clauses. And finally from another arti­cle in the paper:

The biggest con­tracts are rec­om­mended to go to Central Plumbing & Heating for a $4 mil­lion ven­ti­la­tion and heat­ing sys­tem; Liberty Electric for a $2.3 mil­lion elec­tri­cal sys­tem; and Dick Anderson Construction for $1.4 mil­lion for fram­ing and sheetrock, and $975,000 in con­crete work.

This one’s pretty basic, but seems com­pli­cated because of the com­plex list with semi­colons. In the last part of the sen­tence, there should be no comma after “sheetrock” (which should be cap­i­tal­ized as a proper noun, by the way). The con­junc­tion is join­ing a com­pound object of the prepo­si­tion, not inde­pen­dent clauses.

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