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How is this construction correct?

  • The drawing-room began to look empty: the baccarat was discontinued for lack of a banker; more than one person said goodnight of his own accord, and was suffered to depart without expostulation; and in the meanwhile Mr. Morris redoubled in agreeable attentions to those who stayed behind.

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

In my humble opinion, the correct sentence should be:

  • ... banker; more than one person said goodnight of his own accord and was suffered to depart without expostulation; ....

We are not supposed to use commas when a second verb (was) has the same subject as an earlier one (more than one person).

Of course, my problem lies only in that part of the brief.

tchrist
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Esteban Soto Montijo
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    Your text is over 140 years old! Standards of orthography have changed quite a bit since Stevenson wrote this, and he wasn't exactly "modern" for his time anyway! One specific change is that we have less and "lighter" punctuation in every respect today - but since no-one writes text remotely like this today anyway, it's academic how one might punctuate it. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '23 at 04:52
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    fwiw, I would keep the comma, because if I read the text out loud I find I have to pause there (not least because the containing sentence is so long and complex! :) I really don't see the point of that "rule" someone taught you. – FumbleFingers Nov 19 '23 at 04:56
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    Some would also object on style grounds to the use of both colon and semicolon in the same sentence. // While FF's comment about modern punctuation trends is certainly correct, if the use of longer sentences such as the above is still persisted in, the acceptability (indeed improvement) of using a comma to aid parsing // breathing when reading aloud is another change in many people's punctuation conventions. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 19 '23 at 15:29
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    @EdwinAshworth A detailed answer containing a frame challenge to the proposition that one “must never” place a comma before the word and when it joins two predicates sharing the same subject (“We are not supposed to use commas when a second verb has the same subject as an earlier one”) would be most welcome here, and might even come to be canonical. I searched out site, but I was unable to find a suitable canonical duplicate. So I've linked a few related questions instead. I don't know for certain no such suitable canonical duplicate currently exists; I merely failed to find one. – tchrist Nov 19 '23 at 18:06
  • @tchrist There is comma before 'and' where 'and' is not a conjunctive joining independent clauses (ie with compound predicates). – Edwin Ashworth Nov 19 '23 at 19:51

1 Answers1

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Interestingly, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation (Bryan A. Garner, 2016) offers Stevenson’s sentence as an example under “Using Semicolons”:

Use a semicolon to separate items in a list or series when (1) any single element contains and internal comma, (2) the enumeration follows a colon, or (3) the items are broken into subparagraphs.

  • The drawing-room began to look empty: the baccarat was discontinued for lack of a banker; more than one person said goodnight of his own accord, and was suffered to depart without expostulation; and in the meanwhile Mr. Morris redoubled in agreeable attentions to those who stayed behind.

(Never mind that, 140 years later, it’s likely coincidental that Stevenson’s 1882 use of semicolons there fits both (1) and (2), given how variously they are used throughout his text.)

But let’s address your issue . . .

While it’s true that stylists proscribe the use of a comma in the second part of a compound predicate—that is, where the two verbs share the same subject—it’s also true that, as The Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2017) says under “Commas with parenthetical elements”:

If only a slight break is intended, commas may be used to set off a parenthetical element inserted into a sentence as an explanation or comment.

I think you can imagine a parenthetical element here:

The drawing-room began to look empty: the baccarat was discontinued for lack of a banker; more than one person said goodnight of his own accord (and [not only that] was suffered to depart without expostulation); and in the meanwhile Mr. Morris redoubled in agreeable attentions to those who stayed behind.

If that doesn’t ease your mind, here’s The Chicago Manual of Style again, in a Style Q&A that speaks directly to your predicate situation:

The comma isn’t necessary, but if you want to indicate a pause, add it anyway . . . “Effective use of the comma involves good judgment, with the goal being ease of reading.”

Lastly, if you have “an exquisite literary talent” (as Henry James once wrote about Stevenson), you can deploy a comma for any reason that suits your fancy.

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