Cami Sabin, punctuation post

Every time I think of the serial/Oxford comma, I think of this meme I first saw many years ago. It was always my justification for defying AP style conventions by using the comma.

I had an "a-ha" moment last week, though: AP style actually would allow the use of the serial comma in order to prevent confusion. On page 429, it says, "If omitting a comma could lead to confusion or misinterpretation, then use the comma." For some reason I had never realized this. The preferable option, however, would be to rephrase the sentence. For example, it could be written, "We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers."

I encountered several examples of poor punctuation this week in my city's monthly newsletter. Perhaps it is low-hanging fruit, as the newsletter is put together by city employees, not by professional writers and editors. In any case, two examples stood out to me on the front page. I've underlined them.

The first sentence says, "Our code enforcement expert, Jeff Monroe is in reality playing a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole." I believe there should be a second comma after "Monroe," making his name in apposition to "our code enforcement expert." (I'll admit, I'm not sure I used "apposition" correctly in that sentence.) The way it is written could be correct, because the phrase "our code enforcement officer" could be considered just an introductory clause. Because this is the first reference to Mr. Monroe, however, I think the apposition would be more correct.

The second sentence says, "Much like an unchecked mole population, and the "Broken Window" philosophy of law enforcement; if we let the small code enforcement violations pass by, problems are likely to grow bigger and bigger until the environment is overrun with ever-increasing crime and undesirable activities." Multiple corrections could be made in this sentence. My focus for the purpose of this blog entry is the incorrect use of the semi-colon. The phrases before and after the semi-colon should both stand alone as independent clauses, but they don't. The first part of the sentence, "Much like an unchecked mole population, and the "Broken Window" philosophy of law enforcement;" has no subject or verb. It couldn't stand alone. The entire sentence should be rewritten to eliminate the semi-colon.