The following sentence from a biograpy about the Duke of Alba (16th century) posed problems caused by superfluous comma's:
"The shock tactics, the arrests and repression, the executions and the defeat of invasion attempts, all combined to overawe any possible opposition, and stunned the population into submission."
It seemed like an impossble sentence to me and I read it over and over again . It all became clear when I took three commas's off:
The shock tactics, the arrests and repression and the defeat of invasion attemps all combined to overawe any possible opposition and stunned the population into submission. In the original sentence I missed the link between the summing up and the conclusive: 'and stunned the population into submission.'
(think this falls under 'puncutation'?)Sorry, punctuation. (some typo's are worth keeping)
It was a funny reading experience.
