Today I gave something to a junior colleague to edit. It included this sentence:
She added two commas, changing it to this:
The addition of the commas is jarring at best, if not flat-out wrong, but I am not able to explain why quickly and succinctly, since my facility with English is based more on intuition than on explicit rule-based knowledge.
Alas, my colleague disagrees with me and thinks the commas are a good idea. Can someone explain why they are not, in terms more helpful than “it just doesn’t feel right”? Thanks in advance.
Well, I, don’t, know, why, her, commas, are excessive, technically, just that, they, are. She, needs, a , reason, FOR, them. Otherwise, if she, can’t explain, why they’re there, such as, setting off, a subordinate clause, then, out they, go.
I’m not sure if the ‘both’ is adding anything if I’m honest.
How about…
This is not only expected to improve the quality of data, which is essential to the success of IIRMS, but to possibly reduce survey costs.
Either way, I was always taught that a comma denoutes a pause in the text, in the same way we pause during speach.
It prevents your text running on and on forever in some crazy monologue flitting from point to point and sowing the seeds of confusion all about much like my mother using phone text auntie betty had a fall love you
A phrase of the form “both A and B” normally requires no punctuation. The significance of “both” is that A and B are being drawn together, bundled up. Since commas are used to separate things, the addition of commas makes no sense.
Within your phrase you have a parenthetical phrase (“which is essential to IIRMS success”) which you correctly mark with commas – “both A, which is essential to IIRMS success, and B”.
But there is no reason to add commas around “both”. I’m not sure how to articulate a rule to explain this, except to say that if there is no good reason for the commas they are wrong. As it is, their only function is to separate the verb “expected” from its object.
She may possibly be confused, though, by your structure of “both A and possibly B”. I don’t think this is correct. If B is only a possible outcome, then you cannot bracket it with the certain outcome A using the word “both”. Both means two, with the strong sense of not just one. You can have both A and B, or you can have A and possibly also B, but you can’t have both A and possibly B.
Well, she’s a native speaker of English but South Asian, so maybe her inflections are different, I dunno. Maybe, due to her linguistic background or her interpretation of the meaning of the text, she hears it in her head like this:
This is expected - BOTH! - to improve the quality of the data, which is essential to IIRMS success, and possibly to reduce survey costs.
Since we mean no such emphasis, removing the “both” is a good suggestion.
The “both” warns the reader that “there are two things coming, don’t skip over the second one”. And the reason you don’t put comas around it is that it doesn’t constitute a subclause, it’s not independent enough from the rest of the sentence.
There is a bit of a problem here in that there are two ways one can look at “why do we use comas?” In some languages, we use comas to separate clauses within sentences; we mark those same clauses by a short pause during speech. In English, the two markers seem to be merging more and more, so that the reasoning ends up being “we use a coma to mark a pause” without asking “ok, so why do we have a pause?”
I don’t see this as an improvement over the original. Not only is it wordier but the word order is wrong. Better would be: “This is expected not only to improve the quality of data… but to possibly reduce survey costs.”
When you use this construction you need to be careful with the placement of the verb. A good test is to remove the whole “not only… but” clause and see if it still makes sense. In your example, “expected” only applies to the “not only” part but not the “but” part.
This is … to possibly reduce survey costs. - Wrong.
This is expected … to possibly reduce survey costs. - Right.
I’ll leave the quibbling about the split infinitive to someone else.
Slight hijack regarding comma abuse: I often see stray commas along the lines of this example:
“The mighty blue whale, is believed to be the largest creature that has ever lived.”
‘Both’ is being used in your sentence as a correlativeconjunction and shouldn’t be separated by commas. Her edit doesn’t just feel weird. It’s really wrong.
The original sentence is grammatically correct, although I would argue that the second element (possibly reduce survey costs) doesn’t fit comfortably with ‘expected to’. Sounds vague and weaselly if you reduce it to:
If your level of confidence in the two outcomes is different, you might not want to combine them with ‘both’. Something like:
A grammar or usage question that vexes you is often, although not always, a sign that you should re-write for clarity. Many times when someone asks me to choose between two versions of a complex sentence, my answer is “Neither. Simplify.”
If I were trying to explain to someone why this is wrong, I would take one of two approaches:
I would read the sentence aloud, with exaggerated pauses everywhere there’s a comma, and see if she “gets it” from that.
Or, I would explain that, when I see “This is expected,” with a comma after it, I expect it to be a complete clause, with the word “expected” as a single word (a predicate adjective) telling me what “this” is. Is this unexpected? No, this is expected. And that it makes no sense to set “both” off with commas, since “both” isn’t in any way a complete phrase or clause by itself.
Commas around “both” definitely unnecessary and detrimental, as explained above.
That said, I would prefer this word order (“both” coming after “to,” no “to” after “possibly”): This is expected to both improve the quality of the data, which is essential to IIRMS success, and possibly reduce survey costs.
But perhaps best eliminate “both,” as it really doesn’t add clarity and the “possibly” means that there may not be both: This is expected to improve the quality of the data, which is essential to IIRMS success, and possibly to reduce survey costs.
I think all four commas are wrong. I think the sentence should be
This is expected both to improve the quality of the data - which is essential to IIRMS success - and possibly to reduce survey costs.
As noted earlier, the commas denote a subordinate clause. This is incompatible with the both… and… structure. You could also use parentheses if you wished to lessen the import of the phrase.
Using “expected” with “possibly” just seems weird. If I expect something to happen, then the probability should be greater than 50%, which should preclude the use of possibly.
Just create a second sentence:** “There is also the possibility of reduced cost.”**
Expecting a possibility is like grasping at straws in a tornado. I surely expect the possibility of grabbing one, but the probability is close to zero.
Not saying the OP’s sentence is technically wrong, but the message is vague and subject to interpretation and readers’ biases.
Finally, Strunk & White, just as a reference source for comma usage:
I couldn’t suggest a rewrite while leaving that hideous “possibly” in there.
“This is not only expected to improve the quality of the data - which is essential to IIRMS success - but may reduce survey costs.”
While I disagree that setting off with dashes is grammatically any different from using commas, which is definitely correct (and says nothing about dependence), I do agree that the dashes add clarity.