User talk:Mini-mitch

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20:07: Tue 20 Dec 2011

commas
We seem to be having a wrangle about commas. In particular, you seem intent on making sure that commas appear in places where they are not optional (as they may be when preceeding "and"; I cut those out anyway unless they are mandatory) but others in which you think they mark off a subordinate clause -- which, if they were, would be mandatory. However, your analysis is wrong.

In particular, in the article on Julie Legrand, you have

Julie Legrand played the Partisan in the Doctor Who story, The End of Time.

It's a fairly subtle point, but The End of Time is not a subordinate clause which further defines the preceding. This can be better appreciated by removing it.

Julie Legrand played the Partisan in the Doctor Who story.

This sentence is nonsense. It leaves you hanging for definition, because there is no item which can reasonably be called "the Doctor Who story." I think you have confused this with what would have happened had the indefinite article been used. Had the sentence read

Julie Legrand played the Partisan in a Doctor Who story, The End of Time.

You can remove the clause and still have a meanginful, if vague sentence. This difference renders the phrase a subordinate clause.

Anyway, I am going to leave this particular article alone until the normal course of events (hitting it on the random button or noticing that it has recently been edited a lot and so may need a cleanup) brings it to my attention again to give you a chance to think about this. Sorry to lecture a fellow decent writer -- it embarasses me to do so -- but we seem to be working at cross purposes here. Boblipton talk to me 14:10, December 22, 2011 (UTC)